uckled down in the last few weeks, and easily won an honorable
mention. Peter had tried hard to win honors, but failed.

"You did too much outside work, old man," said Watts, who would
cheerfully have given his own triumph to his friend. "If you want
success in anything, you've got to sacrifice other things and
concentrate on the object. The Mention's really not worth the ink it's
written with, in my case, but I knew it would please mammy and pappy, so
I put on steam, and got it. If I'd hitched on a lot of freight cars
loaded with stuff that wouldn't have told in Exams, I never could have
been in on time."

Peter shook his head rather sadly. "You outclass me in brains, Watts, as
much as you do in other things"

"Nonsense," said Watts. "I haven't one quarter of your head. But my
ancestors--here's to the old coves--have been brain-culturing for three
hundred years, while yours have been land-culturing; and of course my
brain moves quicker and easier than yours. I take to a book, by
hereditary instinct, as a duck to water, while you are like a yacht,
which needs a heap of building and fitting before she can do the same.
But you'll beat me in the long run, as easily as the boat does the duck.
And the Honor's nothing."

"Except, as you said, to one's"--Peter hesitated for a moment, divided
in mind by his wish to quote accurately, and his dislike of anything
disrespectful, and then finished "to one's mother."

"That's the last person it's needed for, chum," replied Watts. "If
there's one person that doesn't need the world's or faculty's opinion to
prove one's merit, it's one's dear, darling, doating, self-deluded and
undisillusioned mamma. Heigh-ho. I'll be with mine two weeks from now,
after we've had our visit at the Pierces'. I'm jolly glad you are going,
old man. It will be a sort of tapering-off time for the summer's
separation. I don't see why you insist on starting in at once in New
York? No one does any law business in the summertime. Why, I even think
the courts are closed. Come, you'd better go on to Grey-Court with me,
and try it, at least. My mammy will kill the fatted calf for you in
great style."

"We've settled that once," said Peter, who was evidently speaking
journalistically, for he had done the settling.

Watts said something in a half-articulate way, which certainly would
have fired the blood of every dime museum-keeper in the country, had
they been there to hear the conversation, for, as well as c