talk. Much of it was vulgar, and all of it was dull. It was made the
worse by the fact that they all tried to show, off a little before the
newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to him. To
make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions.

"Do you like--?" a popular soubrette of the day.

"What, never seen her? Where on earth have you been living?"

"Oh? Well, she's got too good legs to waste herself on such a little
place."

They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to
seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing
interest in Peter. One indeed did ask him what business he was in.

"I haven't got to work yet," answered Peter

"Looking for a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not
conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage.
So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves. When time
had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a
man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods
clerks) their respect for him considerably increased. He could not,
however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them. After the manly
high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their
society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked
them to his. Peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found reading
or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way of
passing his evenings.