The Southerner made a gesture of despair. “If I could only understand you, Miss Polly!” “Don’t hope it. I’ve never yet understood myself. But there’s a sympathy in me for the under dog, and this Mr. Perkins seems a sort of helpless creature. Yet in another way he doesn’t seem helpless at all. Quite the reverse. Oh, dear! I’m tired of Perkins, Perkins, Perkins! Let’s talk about something pleasanter—like the plague.” “What’s that about Perkins?” Galpy had entered the drawing-room where the conversation had been carried on, and now crossed over to them. “I’ll tell you a good one on the little blighteh. D’ you know what they call him at the Club Amicitia since his adventure on the street car, Miss Brewster?” “What?” “‘The Unspeakable Perk.’ Rippin’, ain’t it? Like ‘The Unspeakable Turk,’ you know.” Despite herself, Polly’s lips twitched; in some ways he _was_ unspeakable. “They’ve nicknamed him that because of his trying to help me, and then—leaving?” she asked. “Oh, not entirely. There’s other things. He’s a nahsty, stand-offish way with him, you know. Don’t-want-to-know-yeh trick. Wouldn’t-speak-to-yeh-if-I-could-help-it twist to his face. ‘The Unspeakable Perk.’ Stands him right, I should say. There’s other reasons, too.” “What are they?” She saw a quick, warning frown on Carroll’s sharply turned face. Galpy noted it, too, and was lost in confusion. “Oh—ah—just gossip—nothing at all. I say, Miss Brewster, the railway—I’m in the Ferrocarril-del-Norte office, you know—has offered your party a special on an hour’s notice, any time you want it.” “That’s most kind of your road, Mr. Galpy. But why should we want it?” “Things might be getting a bit ticklish any day now. I’ve just taken the message from the manager to your father.” The young Englishman took his leave, and Polly Brewster went to her room, to freshen up for luncheon, carrying with her the sobriquet she had just heard. Certainly, applied to its subject, it had a mucilaginous consistency. It stuck. “‘The Unspeakable Perk,’” she repeated, with a little chuckle. “If I had a month to train him in, eh, what a speakable Perk I’d make him! I’d make him into a Perk that would sit up and speak when I lifted my little finger.” She considered this. “I’m not so sure,” she concluded, more doubtfully. “How can one tell through those horrid glasses, particularly when one doesn’t see him for days and days?” Without moving, she might, however, have seen him forthwith, for at that precise and particular moment, the Unspeakable Perk was in plain sight of her window, on a bench in the corner of the plaza, engaged in light conversation with a legless and philosophical beggar whom he had just astonished by the presentation of a whole bolivar, of the value of twenty cents gold.