elieved being a compatriot made him an
aristocrat. When customers were rude, when Mr. John or Mr. Robert was
overbearing, this idea enabled David to rise above their ill-temper, and
he would smile and say to himself: "If they knew the meaning of the blue
rosette in my button-hole, how differently they would treat me! How
easily with a word could I crush them!"

But few of the customers recognized the significance of the button. They
thought it meant that David belonged to the Y. M. C. A. or was a
teetotaler. David, with his gentle manners and pale, ascetic face, was
liable to give that impression.

When Wyckoff mentioned marriage, the reason David blushed was because,
although no one in the office suspected it, he wished to marry the
person in whom the office took the greatest pride. This was Miss Emily
Anthony, one of Burdett and Sons' youngest, most efficient, and
prettiest stenographers, and although David did not cut as dashing a
figure as did some of the firm's travelling men, Miss Anthony had found
something in him so greatly to admire that she had, out of office hours,
accepted his devotion, his theatre tickets, and an engagement ring.
Indeed, so far had matters progressed, that it had been almost decided
when in a few months they would go upon their vacations they also would
go upon their honeymoon. And then a cloud had come between them, and
from a quarter from which David had expected only sunshine.

The trouble befell when David discovered he had a
great-great-grandfather. With that fact itself Miss Anthony was almost
as pleased as was David himself, but while he was content to bask in
another's glory, Miss Anthony saw in his inheritance only an incentive
to achieve glory for himself.

From a hard-working salesman she had asked but little, but from a
descendant of a national hero she expected other things. She was a
determined young person, and for David she was an ambitious young
person. She found she was dissatisfied. She found she was disappointed.
The great-great-grandfather had opened up a new horizon--had, in a way,
raised the standard. She was as fond of David as always, but his tales
of past wars and battles, his accounts of present banquets at which he
sat shoulder to shoulder with men of whom even Burdett and Sons spoke
with awe, touched her imagination.

"You shouldn't be content to just wear a button," she urged. "If you're
a Son of Washington, you ought to act like one."

"I know I'm not w