yet he was usually up betimes

"It isn't the financial consideration," she began loftily--"alone," she added more honestly. "But to take in a total stranger--" Banneker leaned forward to her. "See here, Mrs. Brashear; there's nothing wrong about me. I don't get drunk. I don't smoke in bed. I'm decent of habit and I'm clean. I've got money enough to carry me. Couldn't you take me on my say-so? Look me over." Though it was delivered with entire gravity, the speech provoked a tired and struggling smile on the landlady's plain features. She looked. "Well?" he queried pleasantly. "What do you think? Will you take a chance?" That suppressed motherliness which, embodying the unformulated desire to look after and care for others, turns so many widows to taking lodgers, found voice in Mrs. Brashear's reply: "You've had a spell of sickness, haven't you?" "No," he said, a little sharply. "Where did you get that idea?" "Your eyes look hot." "I haven't been sleeping very well. That's all." "Too bad. You've had a loss, maybe," she ventured sympathetically. "A loss? No.... Yes. You might call it a loss. You'll take me, then?" "You can move in right away," said Mrs. Brashear recklessly. So the Brashear rooming-house took into its carefully guarded interior the young and unknown Mr. Banneker--who had not been sleeping well. Nor did he seem to be sleeping well in his new quarters, since his light was to be seen glowing out upon the quiet street until long after midnight; yet he was usually up betimes, often even before the moving spirit of the house, herself. A full week had he been there before his fellow lodgers, self-constituted into a Committee on Membership, took his case under consideration in full session upon the front steps. None had had speech with him, but it was known that he kept irregular hours. "What's his job: that's what I'd like to know," demanded in a tone of challenge, young Wickert, a man of the world who clerked in the decorative department of a near-by emporium.