"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.
"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."
Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped into the room, quite unnecessarily assisted by Stuart.
"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."
"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming curiosity. As it is----"
"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to attack the inside of the window.
"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."
"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"
"I believe he was to exist at the hotel--if he could--for twenty-four hours," admitted Georgiana.
"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a--why, he's--he doesn't look like that sort at all."
"The literary. He looks like a--well, I took him for a professional man of some kind."
Georgiana laughed derisively. "Jimps! Isn't authorship a profession?"
"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there."
"Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think of the author-soldiers and author-engineers--and author-Presidents of the United States," she ended triumphantly.
"It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for your father. But if he takes to being company for you--lookout!"
"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives even a little bit."
Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right. But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you--your Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your hearthstone. See?"