ed himself toward the depot. We
brought in those big prep school boys and tried to give them the time of
their lives, but our hearts weren't in it. We were thinking of those Mu
Kow Moos--that frat of all others--blissfully towing home a prize they'd
stumbled onto and didn't know anything about! We thought of those
beautifully designed air-castles we were hoping to move into and we got
pumpkins in our throats. Stung on the first day of school by a bunch
that had to wear their pins on their neckties to keep from being
mistaken for a literary society! Oh, thunder! We went in to dinner all
smeared up with gloom. Then the door opened and Petey came in. He was
five feet five, Petey was, but he stooped when he came under the
chandelier. He had a suitcase in one hand and a stranger in the other.

"Boys," he said, "I want you to meet Mr. Smith, of Chicago."

* * * * *

At first glance you wouldn't have taken Smith for a perambulating
national bank, with a wheelbarrow of spending-money every month. He was
well-enough dressed and all that, but he didn't loom up in any
mountainous fashion as to looks. He was runty and his hair was a kind of
discouraged red. He had freckles, too, and he was so bashful that his
voice blushed when he used it. He didn't have a word to say until
dinner, when he said "thank you" to Sam, the waiter. Altogether he was
so meek that he had us worried; but then, as Allie Bangs said, you can't
always tell about these multimillionaires. Some of them didn't have the
nerve of a mouse. He'd seen millionaires in New York, he said, who were
afraid of cab drivers.

"And besides," said Petey, when a few of us were talking it over after
dinner, "I'd never have got him if he hadn't been so meek. I was
determined that no Mu Kow Moo was going to hang anything on us; and when
I saw the three of them coming I waded right in. Allison and Briggs,
those two dumb Juniors, were doing the steering. It was like taking
candy from the baby. I just fell right into them and took about five
minutes to tell those two how glad I was to see them back. I introduced
myself to Smith; and--would you believe it?--he was still carrying his
suitcase! I grabbed it and apologized for not having carried it all the
way up from the station. You should have seen those yaps scowl. They
wanted to shred me up, but I never noticed them again. I pointed out all
the sights to Smith and told him his friends had written me ab