hat well-worn subject. Perhaps he had his pay by
being asked to call upon both. More probably the requests were due to
what Mrs. Purple had said of him during the smoking time:

"He seems such a nice, solid, sensible fellow. I wish some of you would
ask him to call on you. He has no friends, apparently."

The dinner at Justice Gallagher's was a horse of a very different color.
The men did not impress him very highly, and the women not at all. There
was more to eat and drink, and the talk was fast and lively. Peter was
very silent. So quiet, that Mrs. Gallagher told her "take in" that she
"guessed that young Stirling wasn't used to real fashionable dinners,"
and Peter's partner quite disregarded him for the rattling, breezy
talker on her other side. After the dinner Peter had a pleasant chat
with the Justice's seventeen-year-old daughter, who was just from a
Catholic convent, and the two tried to talk in French. It is wonderful
what rubbish is tolerable if only talked in a foreign tongue.

"I don't see what you wanted to have that Stirling for?" said Honorable
Mrs. Justice Gallagher, to him who conferred that proud title upon her,
after the guests had departed.

"You are clever, arn't you?" said Gallagher, bitingly.

"That's living with you," retorted the H.M.J., who was not easily put
down.

"Then you see that you treat Stirling as if he was somebody. He's
getting to be a power in the ward, and if you want to remain Mrs.
Justice Gallagher and spend eight thousand--and pickings--a year, you
see that you keep him friendly."

"Oh, I'll be friendly, but he's awful dull."

"Oh, no, mamma," said Monica. "He really isn't. He's read a great many
more French books than I have."

Peter lunched with the wholesale provision-dealer as planned. The lunch
hour proving insufficient for the discussion, a family dinner, a few
days later, served to continue it. The dealer's family were not very
enthusiastic about Peter.

"He knows nothing but grub talk," grumbled the heir apparent, who from
the proud altitude of a broker's office, had come to scorn the family
trade.

"He doesn't know any fashionable people," said one of the girls, who
having unfulfilled ambitions concerning that class, was doubly
interested and influenced by its standards and idols.

"He certainly is not brilliant," remarked the mother.

"Humph," growled the pater-familias, "that's the way all you women go
on. Brilliant! Fashionable! I don't wonder marriag