hair and sauntered
haughtily over to see what I was after.

Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as
the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ...
that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.

I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office,
where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War
battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp
stools,--bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.

Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth. He looked about,
first, as if to find me. His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in
a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.

"Come in here," he bade, not even calling me by name.

I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold. But his precision and
appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of
myself, deprecative. So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying
my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure
of my case. And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly,
the while.

I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that
I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college
with....

"Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask," I was dreaming, as I pleaded,
"I'll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval
buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry
... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else."

"No! how absurd!" he was snapping decisively. I came to from my vision.

"My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and--" as if that were
the last enormity--"very unbusinesslike!"

"But I will then become a great poet! On my word of honour, I will! and
I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!"

He shook his head. He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small
flagpole. As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.

"Come, you haven't eaten yet?"

"No!"

Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.

Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old
Grandfather Gregory took me to a--lunch counter ... bowing to numerous
friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a
hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a
scarecrow in a field.

I grew so angry at him I could hardly bridle