he will," contested the other. "No son of Walter Neilson's
could be a sissy. Neilson was the best half-back in ten years at
Harvard, and he was always in for everything going that was worth while.
'Autumn leaves and worsted mottoes' indeed! Bah!"

"All right; but there's still a dark horse in the case, you know. We
mustn't forget--Spunk."

The elder man stirred uneasily.

"Bert, what do you suppose that creature is? You don't think Cyril can
be right, and that it's a--monkey?"

"'You never can tell,'" quoted Bertram, merrily. "Of course there ARE
other things. If it were you, now, we'd only have to hunt up the special
thing you happened to be collecting at the time, and that would be it: a
snake, a lizard, a toad, or maybe a butterfly. You know you were always
lugging those things home when you were his age."

"Yes, I know," sighed William. "But I can't think it's anything like
that," he finished, as he turned away.

There was very little done in the Beacon Street house that day but to
"get ready for Billy." In the kitchen Dong Ling cooked. Everywhere else,
except in Cyril's domain, Pete dusted and swept and "puttered" to his
heart's content. William did not go to the office at all that day, and
Bertram did not touch his brushes. Only Cyril attended to his usual
work: practising for a coming concert, and correcting the proofs of his
new book, "Music in Russia."

At ten minutes before five William, anxious-eyed and nervous, found
himself at the North Station. Then, and not till then, did he draw a
long breath of relief.

"There! I think everything's ready," he sighed to himself. "At last!"

He wore no pink in his buttonhole. There was no need that he should
accede to that silly request, he told himself. He had only to look for
a youth of perhaps eighteen years, who would be alone, a little
frightened, possibly, and who would have a pink in his buttonhole, and
probably a dog on a leash.

As he waited, the man was conscious of a curious warmth at his heart.
It was his namesake, Walter Neilson's boy, that he had come to meet; a
homesick, lonely orphan who had appealed to him--to him, out of all the
world. Long years ago in his own arms there had been laid a tiny bundle
of flannel holding a precious little red, puckered face. But in a
month's time the little face had turned cold and waxen, and the hopes
that the white flannel bundle had carried had died with the baby
boy;--and that baby would have been a lad gro