This was Landry Court, a young fellow just turned twenty-three, who
was "connected with" the staff of the great brokerage firm of
Gretry, Converse and Co. He was astonishingly good-looking,
small-made, wiry, alert, nervous, debonair, with blond hair and dark
eyes that snapped like a terrier's. He made friends almost at first
sight, and was one of those fortunate few who were favoured equally
of men and women. The healthiness of his eye and skin persuaded to a
belief in the healthiness of his mind; and, in fact, Landry was as
clean without as within. He was frank, open-hearted, full of fine
sentiments and exaltations and enthusiasms. Until he was eighteen he
had cherished an ambition to become the President of the United
States.

"Yes, yes," he said to Laura, "the bridge was turned. It was an
imposition. We had to wait while they let three tows through. I
think two at a time is as much as is legal. And we had to wait for
three. Yes, sir; three, think of that! I shall look into that to-morrow.
Yes, sir; don't you be afraid of that. I'll look into it."
He nodded his head with profound seriousness.

"Well," announced Mr. Cressler, marshalling the party, "shall we go
in? I'm afraid, Laura, we've missed the overture."

Smiling, she shrugged her shoulders, while they moved to the wicket,
as if to say that it could not be helped now.

Cressler, tall, lean, bearded, and stoop-shouldered, belonging to
the same physical type that includes Lincoln--the type of the Middle
West--was almost a second father to the parentless Dearborn girls.
In Massachusetts, thirty years before this time, he had been a