I've just
taken the message from the manager to your father."
The young Englishman took his leave, and Polly Brewster went to
her room, to freshen up for luncheon, carrying with her the
sobriquet she had just heard. Certainly, applied to its subject,
it had a mucilaginous consistency. It stuck.
"'The Unspeakable Perk,'" she repeated, with a little chuckle. "If
I had a month to train him in, eh, what a speakable Perk I'd make
him! I'd make him into a Perk that would sit up and speak when I
lifted my little finger." She considered this. "I'm not so sure,"
she concluded, more doubtfully. "How can one tell through those
horrid glasses, particularly when one doesn't see him for days and
days?"
Without moving, she might, however, have seen him forthwith, for
at that precise and particular moment, the Unspeakable Perk was in
plain sight of her window, on a bench in the corner of the plaza,
engaged in light conversation with a legless and philosophical
beggar whom he had just astonished by the presentation of a whole
bolivar, of the value of twenty cents gold.
After she had finished luncheon and returned to her room, he was
still there.
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