"I'm studying the subject," Peter said. "Will you let me come down some
day, and talk with you about it?"

"Yes, by all means. You'd better call about lunch hour, when I'm free,
and we can talk without interruption."

Peter would much have preferred to go on discussing with the men, when
they all joined the ladies, but Mrs. Purple took him off, and placed him
between two women. They wanted to hear about "the case," so Peter
patiently went over that well-worn subject. Perhaps he had his pay by
being asked to call upon both. More probably the requests were due to
what Mrs. Purple had said of him during the smoking time:

"He seems such a nice, solid, sensible fellow. I wish some of you would
ask him to call on you. He has no friends, apparently."

The dinner at Justice Gallagher's was a horse of a very different color.
The men did not impress him very highly, and the women not at all. There
was more to eat and drink, and the talk was fast and lively. Peter was
very silent. So quiet, that Mrs. Gallagher told her "take in" that she
"guessed that young Stirling wasn't used to real fashionable dinners,"
and Peter's partner quite disregarded him for the rattling, breezy
talker on her other side. After the dinner Peter had a pleasant chat
with the Justice's seventeen-year-old daughter, who was just from a
Catholic convent, and the two tried to talk in French. It is wonderful
what rubbish is tolerable if only talked in a foreign tongue.

"I don't see what you wanted to have that Stirling for?" said Honorable
Mrs. Justice Gallagher, to him who conferred that proud title upon her,