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 with this thought, the fellow-countryman with whom last of all he would have had General Sir William Broadfeather and his ladies behold him conversing came breezily into the room on his way to the elevator. Ogle looked at the wall, hoping not to be recognized by the back of his head.

He looked at the wall in vain. "Well, I declare!" Tinker exclaimed. "Do you drink tea? My soul!" And he sat down cordially in a wicker chair near the playwright, who began to feel that Fate had become too ironical to be borne. This Old Man of the Sea was now fast to his shoulders upon the land; and there seemed to be no way to escape him. What Ogle wished to say was, "Let me alone! I have no desire for your society or even for your acquaintance!" But he was weakly incapable of so honest a course; he could only fall back on a feeble coldness, wholly ineffective, as he had been but too reliably informed, because Tinker blandly mistook it for mere stupidity. To one so sensitive as Ogle this was not a pleasing mistake; he would strongly have preferred to be thought brutal; but as he had no talent for open rudeness, he could only sit and suffer.

"Tea!" Tinker repeated with loud incredulity. "I thought hardly anybody except women and Eng-