_anybody_."

"All right! I'll bring him." A pause, then. "Father's just the same?"

"Yes," she answered, in sudden confusion and shame.

CHAPTER VIII

A FRIEND IN NEED

In the turmoil of his own affairs Arthur forgot his promise almost while
he was making it. Fortunately, as he was driving home, the sight of Dr.
Hargrave, marching absent-mindedly along near the post office, brought it
to his mind again. With an impatient exclamation--for he prided himself
upon fidelity to his given word, in small matters as well as in
larger--he turned the horse about. He liked Dory Hargrave, and in a way
admired him; Dory was easily expert at many of the sports at which Arthur
had had to toil before he was able to make even a passable showing. But
Dory, somehow, made him uncomfortable. They had no point of view in
common; Dory regarded as incidental and trivial the things which seemed
of the highest importance to Arthur. Dory had his way to make in the
world; Arthur had been spared that discomfort and disadvantage. Yet Dory
persisted in pretending to regard Arthur as in precisely the same
position as himself; once he had even carried the pretense to the
impertinence of affecting to sympathize with Arthur for being so sorely
handicapped. On that occasion Arthur had great difficulty in restraining
plain speech. He would not have been thus tactful and gentlemanly had he
not realized that Dory meant the best in the world, and was wholly
unconscious that envy was his real reason for taking on such a
preposterous pose. "Poor chap!" Arthur had reflected. "One shouldn't
blame him for snatching at any consolation, however flimsy." In those
days Arthur often, in generous mood, admitted--to himself--that fortune
had been shamefully partial in elevating him, without any effort on his
part, but merely by the accident of birth, far above the overwhelming
majority of young men. He felt doubly generous--in having such broad
views and in not aggravating the misfortunes of the less lucky by
expressing them.

Dr. Hargrave and his son--his only child--and his dead wife's sister,
Martha Skeffington, lived in a quaint old brick house in University
Avenue. A double row of ancient elms shaded the long walk straight up
from the gate. On the front door was a huge bronze knocker which Arthur
lifted and dropped several times without getting response. "Probably the
girl's in the kitchen; and old Miss Skeffington is so deaf she couldn't
hear," he th