CHAPTER IX.

HAPPINESS BY PROXY.


The window of Peter's office faced east, and the rays of the morning sun
shining dazzlingly in his eyes forced him back to a consciousness of
things mundane. He rose, and went downstairs, to find the night
watch-man just opening the building. Fortunately he had already met the
man, so that he was not suspected as an intruder; and giving him a
pleasant "good-morning," Peter passed into the street. It was a good
morning indeed, with all that freshness and coolness which even a great
city cannot take from a summer dawn. For some reason Peter felt more
encouraged. Perhaps it was the consciousness of having beaten his
loneliness and misery by mere physical endurance. Perhaps it was only
the natural spring of twenty years. At all events, he felt dimly, that
miserable and unhopeful as the future looked, he was not conquered yet;
that he was going to fight on, come what might.

He turned to the river front, and after bargaining with a passing cart
for a pint of what the poorer people of the city buy as milk, he turned
north, and quickening his pace, walked till he had left the city proper
and had reached the new avenue or "drive," which, by the liberality of
Mr. Tweed with other people's money, was then just approaching
completion. After walking the length of it, he turned back to his
boarding-place, and after a plunge, felt as if he could face and fight
the future to any extent.

As a result of this he was for the first time late at breakfast The
presider over the box-office had ascertained that Peter had spent the