his friend--and then and there forced him into an easy chair near
the open wood fire, with some such remark as: "Down, you rascal,
and sit close up where I can get my hands on you!" No--there was
no trace of old age about Peter.

He was ready now--hatted, coated and gloved--not a hint of the
ostrich egg or shaggy shutters visible, but a well-preserved
bachelor of forty or forty-five; strictly in the mode and of the
mode, looking more like some stray diplomat caught in the wiles of
the Street, or some retired magnate, than a modest bank clerk on
three thousand a year. The next instant he was tripping down the
granite steps between the rusty iron railings--on his toes most of
the way; the same cheery spring in his heels, slapping his thin,
shapely legs with his tightly rolled umbrella, adjusting his hat
at the proper angle so that the well-trimmed side whiskers--the
veriest little dabs of whiskers hardly an inch long--would show as
well as the fringes of his grey hair.

Not that he was anxious to conceal these slight indications of
advancing years, nor did he have a spark of cheap personal vanity
about him, but because it was his nature always to put his best
foot foremost and keep it there; because, too, it behooved him in
manner, dress and morals, to maintain the standards he had set for
himself, he being a Grayson, with the best blood of the State in
his veins, and with every table worth dining at open to him from
Fourteenth Street to Murray Hill, and beyond.

"Now, it's all behind me, my dear boy," he cried, as we reached
the sidewalk and turned our faces up Wall Street toward Broadway.
"Fifteen hours to live my own life! No care until ten o'clock to-