Paynter's, where Surface Senior had lived for nearly three years.
And so the young man had gone to his father, straight as a homing
pigeon.
How strange, how strange to look back on all this now!
Half reclining in the nurse's chair, unseeing eyes on the shaded and
shuttered window, for the fiftieth time Queed let his mind go back over
his days at Mrs. Paynter's, reading them all anew in the light of his
staggering knowledge. With three communications of the most fragmentary
sort, his father had had his full will of his son. With six typewritten
lines, he had drawn the young man to his side at his own good pleasure.
Boarding-house gossip made it known that the son was in peril of
ejectment for non-payment of board, and a twenty-dollar bill had been
promptly transmitted--at some risk of discovery--to ease his stringency.
Last came the mysterious counsel to make friends and to like people, the
particular friends and people intended being consolidated, he could
understand now, in the person of old Nicolovius. And that message out of
the unknown had had its effect: Queed could see that now, at any rate.
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