well yet. We'll get better acquainted by and by, and, again thanking
you...."

He paused, bowed briefly and grandly as lords in Nob Hill palaces
early learn to bow, and, by the quality of the pause, signified that
the audience was over. Nor did the impact of dismissal miss his
guardians. They, who had been co-lords with his father, withdrew
confused and perplexed. Messrs. Davidson and Slocum were on the point
of resolving their perplexity into wrath, as they went down the great
stone stairway to the waiting carriage, but Mr. Crockett, the testy
and snappish, muttered ecstatically: "The son of a gun! The little son
of a gun!"

The carriage carried them down to the old Pacific Union Club, where,
for another hour, they gravely discussed the future of Young Dick
Forrest and pledged themselves anew to the faith reposed in them by
Lucky Richard Forrest. And down the hill, on foot, where grass grew on
the paved streets too steep for horse-traffic, Young Dick hurried. As
the height of land was left behind, almost immediately the palaces and
spacious grounds of the nabobs gave way to the mean streets and wooden
warrens of the working people. The San Francisco of 1887 as
incontinently intermingled its slums and mansions as did the old
cities of Europe. Nob Hill arose, like any medieval castle, from the
mess and ruck of common life that denned and laired at its base.

Young Dick came to pause alongside a corner grocery, the second story
of which was rented to Timothy Hagan Senior, who, by virtue of being a
policeman with a wage of a hundred dollars a month, rented this high
place to dwell above his fellows who supported families on no more
than forty and fifty dollars a month.