put together young man, groomed, tailored, outfitted according to the
mode.

"Are you ready, Contrary Mary?" he said, then saw Roger and stopped.

Porter was a gentleman, so his manner to Roger Poole showed no hint of
what he thought of lodgers in general, and this one in particular. He
shook hands and said a few pleasant and perfunctory things. Personally
he thought the man looked down and out. But no one could tell what
Mary might think. Mary's standards were those of the dreamer and the
star gazer. What she was seeking she would never find in a Mere Man.
The danger lay however, in the fact that she might mistakenly hang her
affections about the neck of some earth-bound Object and call it an
Ideal.

As for himself, in spite of his Buff-Orpington crest, and his
cock-o'-the-walk manner, Porter was, as far Mary was concerned,
saturated with humility. He knew that his money, his family's social
eminence were as nothing in her eyes. If underneath the weight of
these things Mary could find enough of a man in him to love that could
be his only hope. And that hope had held him for years to certain
rather sedate ambitions, and had given him moral standards which had
delighted his mother and had puzzled his father.

"Whatever I am as a man, you've made me," he said to Mary two hours
later, in the intermission between the second and third acts of the
musical comedy, which, for a time, had claimed their attention. Aunt
Isabelle, in front of the box, was smiling gently, happy in the golden
light and the nearness of the music. Barry was visiting Leila and the
General who were just below, in orchestra chairs.