Morris's broad shoulders.

"Take the Major with you, that's a good fellow, and let me drop in about eleven o'clock," he pleaded, an expression on his face seen only when two men understand and love each other. "There's a letter from Felicia to attend to; she writes she is coming down for a couple of weeks, and then I've really had a devil of a day at the bank."

"No, you old fraud, you can't wheedle me that way. I want you before everybody sits down, so my young chaps can look you over. Why, Peter, you're better than a whole course of lectures, and you mean something, you beggar! I tell you" (here he lifted himself from the depths of the chair and scrambled to his feet) "you've got to go if I have to tie your hands and feet and carry you downstairs on my back! And you, too, Major—both of you. Here's your overcoat—into it, you humbug!... the other arm. Is this your hat? Out you go!" and before I had stopped laughing—I had refused to crowd the cab—Morris had buttoned the surtout over Peter's breast, crammed the straight-brimmed hat over his eyes, and the two were clattering downstairs.

CHAPTER III

Long before the two had reached the top floor of the building in which the dinner was to be given, they had caught the hum of the merrymakers, the sound bringing a smile of satisfaction to Peter's face, but it was when he entered the richly colored room itself, hazy with cigarette smoke, and began to look into the faces of the guests grouped about him and down the long table illumined by myriads of wax candles that all his doubts and misgivings faded into thin air. Never since his school days, he told me afterwards, had he seen so many boisterously happy young fellows grouped together. And not only young fellows, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, but older men with thoughtful faces, who had relinquished for a day the charge of some one of the important buildings designed in the distinguished architect's office, and had spent the night on the train that they might do honor to their Chief.

But it was when Morris, with his arm fast locked in his, began introducing him right and left as the "Guest of Honor of the Evening," the two shaking hands first with one and then another, Morris breaking out into joyous salvos of welcome over some arrival from a distant city, or greeting with marked kindness and courtesy one of the younger men from his own office, that the old fellow's enthusiasm became uncontrollable.

"Isn't it glorious, Holker!" he cried joyously, with uplifted hands. "Oh, I'm so glad I came! I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the world. Did you ever see anything like it? This is classic, my boy—it has the tang and the spice of the ancients."

Morris's greeting to me was none the less hearty, although he had left me but half an hour before.

"Late, as I expected, Major," he cried with out-stretched hand, "and serves you right for not sitting in Peter's lap in the cab. Somebody ought to sit on him once in a while. He's twenty years younger already. Here, take this seat alongside of me where you can keep him in order—they were at table when I entered. Waiter, bring back that bottle—Just a light claret, Major—all we allow ourselves."

As the evening wore away the charm of the room grew upon me. Vistas hazy with tobacco smoke opened up; the ceiling lost in the fog gave one the impression of out-of-doors—like a roof-garden at night; a delusion made all the more real by the happy uproar. And then the touches here and there by men whose life had been the study of color and effects; the appointments of the table, the massing of flowers relieving the white cloth; the placing of shaded candles, so that only a rosy glow filtered through the loom, softening the light on the happy faces—each scalp crowned with chaplets of laurel tied with red ribbons: an enchantment of color, form and light where but an hour before only the practical and the commonplace had held sway.

No vestige of the business side of the offices remained. Peter pointed out to me a big plaster model of the State House, which filled one end of the room, and two great figures, original plaster casts, heroic in size, that Harding, the sculptor, had modelled for either side of the entrance of the building; but everything that smacked of T-square or scale was hidden from sight. In their place, lining the walls, stood a row of standards of red and orange silk, stretched on rods and supported by poles; the same patterns of banners which were carried before Imperial Caesars when they took an airing; and now emblazoned with the titles of the several structures conceived in the brain of Holker Morris and executed by his staff: the Imperial Library in Tokio; the great Corn Exchange covering a city block; the superb Art Museum crowning the highest hill in the Park; the beautiful chateau of the millionaire surrounded by thousands of acres of virgin forest; the spacious warehouses on the water front, and many others.

With the passing of the flagons an electric current of good fellowship flashed around the circle. Stories that would have been received with but a bare smile at the club were here greeted with shouts of laughter. Bon-mots, skits, puns and squibs mouldy with age or threadbare with use, were told with a new gusto and welcomed with delight.

Suddenly, and without any apparent reason, these burst forth a roar like that of a great orchestra with every instrument played at its loudest—rounds of applause from kettle-drums, trombones and big horns; screams of laughter from piccolos, clarionettes and flutes, buzzings of subdued talk by groups of bass viols and the lesser strings, the whole broken by the ringing notes of a song that soared for an instant clear of the din, only to be overtaken and drowned in the mighty shout of approval. This was followed by a stampede from the table; the banners were caught up with a mighty shout and carried around the room; Morris, boy for the moment, springing to his feet and joining in the uproar.

The only guest who kept his chair, except Peter and myself, was a young fellow two seats away, whose eyes, brilliant with excitement, followed the merrymaking, but who seemed too much abashed, or too ill at ease, to join in the fun. I had noticed how quiet he was and wondered at the cause. Peter had also been watching the boy and had said to me that he had a good face and was evidently from out of town.

"Why don't you get up?" Peter called to him at last. "Up with you, my lad. This is one of the times when every one of you young fellows should be on your feet." He would have grabbed a banner himself had any one given him the slightest encouragement.

"I would, sir, but I'm out of it," said the young man with a deferential bow, moving to the empty seat next to Peter. He too had been glancing at Peter from time to time.

"Aren't you with Mr. Morris?"

"No, I wish I were. I came with my friend, Garry Minott, that young fellow carrying the banner with 'Corn Exchange' marked on it."

"And may I ask, then, what you do?" continued Peter.

The young fellow looked into the older man's kindly eyes—something in their expression implied a wish to draw him the closer—and said quite simply: "I don't do anything that is of any use, sir. Garry says that I might as well work in a faro bank."

Peter leaned forward. For the moment the hubbub was forgotten as he scrutinized the young man, who seemed scarcely twenty-one, his well-knit, well-dressed body, his soft brown hair curled about his scalp, cleanly modelled ears, steady brown eyes, white teeth—especially the mobile lips which seemed quivering from some suppressed emotion—all telling of a boy delicately nurtured.

"And do you really work in a faro bank?" Peter's knowledge of human nature had failed him for once.

"Oh, no sir, that is only one of Garry's jokes. I'm clerk in a stock broker's office on Wall Street. Arthur Breen & Company.