The lady who came is my sister, Mrs.Gerard; and whenever she comes you are to admit her whether or not I am here." "She said she might come again," nodded Mrs.Greeve as he mounted the stairs; "am I to show her up any time she comes ?" "Certainly--thank you," he called back--"and Mr.Gerard, too, if he calls." He looked into Boots's room as he passed; that gentleman, in bedroom costume of peculiar exotic gorgeousness, sat stuffing a pipe with shag, and poring over a mass of papers pertaining to the Westchester Air Line's property and prospective developments.
"Come in, Phil," he called out; "and look at the dinky chair somebody sent me!" But Selwyn shook his head.
"Come into my rooms when you're ready," he said, and closed the door again, smiling and turning away toward his own quarters.
Before he entered, however, he walked the length of the hall and cautiously tried the handle of Gerald's door.

It yielded; he lighted a match and gazed at the sleeping boy where he lay very peacefully among his pillows.

Then, without a sound, he reclosed the door and withdrew to his apartment.
As he emerged from the bedroom in his dressing-gown he heard the front door-bell below peal twice, but paid no heed, his attention being concentrated on the chair which Nina had sent him.

First he walked gingerly all around it, then he ventured nearer to examine it in detail, and presently he tried it.
"Of course," he sighed--"bless her heart!--it's a perfectly impossible chair.

It squeaks, too." But he was mistaken; the creak came from the old stairway outside his door, weighted with the tread of Mrs.Greeve.
The tread and the creaking ceased; there came a knock, then heavy descending footsteps on the aged stairway, every separate step protesting until the incubus had sunk once more into the depths from which it had emerged.
As this happened to be the night for his laundry, he merely called out, "All right!" and remained incurious, seated in the new chair and striving to adjust its stiff and narrow architecture to his own broad shoulders.