refastening the diamond pin--a tiny one but clear as a baby's
tear--put on his frock-coat with its high collar and flaring
tails, took down his silk hat, gave it a flourish with his
handkerchief, unhooked his overcoat from a peg behind the door (a
gray surtout cut something like the first Napoleon's) and stepped
out to where I sat.

You would never have put him down as being sixty years of age had
you known him as well as I did--and it is a great pity you
didn't. Really, now that I come to think of it, I never did put
him down as being of any age at all. Peter Grayson and age never
seemed to have anything to do with each other. Sometimes when I
have looked in through the Receiving Teller's window and have
passed in my book--I kept my account at the Exeter--and he has
lifted his bushy shutters and gazed at me suddenly with his merry
Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line of
anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which
for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle
older than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the
winds when I met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street
with that cheery lift of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift
that the occupants of every office window on both sides of the
street knew to be Peter's even when they failed to recognize the
surtout and straight-brimmed high hat. Had any doubting Thomas,
however, walked beside him on his way up Broadway to his rooms on
Fifteenth Street, and had the quick, almost boyish lift of Peter's
heels not entirely convinced the unbeliever of Peter's youth, all
questions would have been at once disposed of had the cheery bank
teller invited him into his apartment up three flights of stairs
over the tailor's shop--and he would have invited him had he been