However the transaction was not kept entirely quiet. The roses were
delivered promptly, and became the chief topic of conversation at Mrs.
Paynter's dinner-table. Through an enforced remark of Mr. Queed's, and
the later discursive gossip of the boarders, it became disseminated over
the town that Bartlett's was selling American Beauties at thirty-seven
and a half cents a dozen, and the poor man had to buy ten inches, double
column, in the _Post_ next morning to get himself straightened out and
reestablish Bartlett's familiar quotations.
XII
_More Consequences of the Plan about the Gift, and of how Mr. Queed
drinks his Medicine like a Man; Fifi on Men, and how they do;
Second Corruption of The Sacred Schedule._
Queed's irrational impulse to make Fifi a small gift cost him the heart
of his morning. A call would have been cheaper, after all. Nor was the
end yet. In this world it never is, where one event invariably hangs by
the tail of another in ruthless concatenation. Starting out for Open-air
Pedestrianism at 4.45 that afternoon, the young man was waylaid in the
hail by Mrs.
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