with a picturesque fringe of white, kinky hair, shuffled from the
porter's quarters, where he had been enjoying a quiet chat with the
black knight of the whisk broom. "What is you' desire, Colonel?"

"I want peace and quiet, Shag! That's what I want! Twice I've tried
to read my book undisturbed, and that insufferable train-boy--that
rascal who probably doesn't know an ant-fly from a piece of cheese--has
bothered me with books and papers. He ought to know I've vowed not to
look at a paper for two weeks, and, as for books--"

Colonel Robert Lee Ashley closed his volume, which bore, in gold
letters on the front green cover the words: "Walton's Complete Angler,"
and laughed silently, the wrinkles of his face and around his
steel-blue eyes sending the frown scurrying for some unseen trench.

"Shag," asked the colonel, still chuckling, "what do you think that
nincompoop had the infernal audacity to offer me in the way of a book?"

"I ain't got no idea, Colonel--not th' leastest in th' world!"

"He offered me a--detective story, Shag!"

"Oh, mah good Lord, Colonel! Not _really_?"

"Yes, he did, Shag! A detective story!"

"Oh, mah good Lord!"

Shag, which was all Colonel Ashley ever called his servant, though the
colored valet rejoiced in the prefixes of George Washington, threw up