iness and was pleased from the start
with the outlook.

"A fellow," he said, "can pick up more experience out there in a month
than he could in one of these big downtown offices in a year."

Nearly two years passed before I was to see him in his new environment.
There came up a bit of business for a suburban client of mine which
could as well be settled at Johnny's place as at another. It needed no
more than a glance to perceive that Johnny was the dominant factor of
the little institution. His was the biggest roller-top seen through a
maze of gilt letters on a vast sheet of plate glass by commuters turning
the corner morning and evening. His, too, chiefly, the deference of
clerks and office-boy. He was ruddy and robust, and seemed likely to
impose himself anywhere, when the time came. Thus far, a small Forum,
perhaps; but he was the Caesar in it. He did not disdain to attend to my
affair himself; he even showed an emphatic, if not ponderous,
_bonhomie_.

Just as I was getting up to leave, a man of forty-five or more, with the
general aspect of a contractor's foreman, put in his head. It was
Johnny's father.

"I guess you know George Waite," Johnny said to him; "and I guess he
knows you."

We shook hands, under Johnny's direction, and said that he was right.
His father's hand--rough and with a broken nail or two--was that of a
superintendent who on occasion helped with a plank or a mortarboard. He
had an open face and a pleasant manner; he was not at all the dominant
personage I remembered meeting in that "yard," years ago. Johnny, it
seemed, was putting up a row of small houses on the suburb's edge, and
his father was supervising the job. Johnny was pretty direct in saying
what he wanted done, or not done, in connection with this work; and if
his father made a suggestion it was as likely as not to be overruled. He
was only one of the senators in Johnny's little curia, and probably far
from the most important of them.

Johnny's father got away, after all, before I did. Johnny asked me to
stay for a little, and there was not much for a young professional man
to do after catching the 4.52 into town. We sat for a while talking of
indifferent matters. Johnny, surrounded by his own prosperity, asked
with a show of interest, and without condescension, about my progress in
the law, and I was replying with the cautious vagueness of one whose
practice is not yet all he hopes it will be. During this time I had
noticed, th