at they all tried to show, off a little before the
newcomer, to prove their superiority and extreme knowingness to him. To
make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions.

"Do you like--?" a popular soubrette of the day.

"What, never seen her? Where on earth have you been living?"

"Oh? Well, she's got too good legs to waste herself on such a little
place."

They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to
seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing
interest in Peter. One indeed did ask him what business he was in.

"I haven't got to work yet," answered Peter

"Looking for a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not
conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage.
So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves. When time
had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a
man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods
clerks) their respect for him considerably increased. He could not,
however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them. After the manly
high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their
society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked
them to his. Peter had nothing of the snob in him, but he found reading
or writing, or a tramp about the city, much the pleasanter way of
passing his evenings.

The morning after this first day in New York, Peter called on his
friend, the civil engineer, to consult him about an office; for Watts
had been rather hazy in regard to where he might best locate that. Mr.
Converse shook his head when Peter outlined his plan.

"Do you know any New York people," he asked, "who will be likely to give
you cases?"

"No," said Peter.

"Then it's absolutely foolish of you to begin that way," said Mr.
Converse. "Get into a lawyer's office, and make friends first before you
think of starting by yourself. You'll otherwise never get a client."

Peter shook his head. "I've thought it out," he added, as if that
settled it.

Mr. Converse looked at him, and, really liking the fellow, was about to
explain the real facts to him, when a client came in. So he only said,
"If that's so, go ahead. Locate on Broadway, anywhere between the
Battery and Canal Street." Later in the day, when he had time, he shook
his head, and said, "Poor devil! Like all the rest."

Anywhere between the