arrived among us with a Beaux Arts
moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others. We
found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young men, always
ready to donate his talents and his services to private theatricals,
tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a table at the last
moment. One of his most appealing attributes was his "belief" in our
city,--a form of patriotism that culminated, in later years, in "million
population" clubs. I have often heard him declare, when the ladies had
left the dining-room, that there was positively no limit to our future
growth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth. Such sentiments as these
could not fail to add to any man's popularity, and his success was a
foregone conclusion. Almost before we knew it he was building the new
Union Station of which he had foreseen the need, to take care of the
millions to which our population was to be swelled; building the new Post
Office that the unceasing efforts of Theodore Watling finally procured
for us: building, indeed, Nancy's new house, the largest of our private
mansions save Mr. Scherer's, a commission that had immediately brought
about others from the Dickinsons and the Berringers.... That very day I
called on him in his offices at the top of one of our new buildings,
where many young draftsmen were bending over their boards. I was ushered
into his private studio.

"I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh," he said, looking at me
over his cigarette, "something commensurate with these fees I hear you
are getting."

"Well, I want to be comfortable," I admitted.

We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements.

When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on the
living-room table Maude drew in her breath.

"Why, Hugh," she exclaimed in dismay, "it's as big as--as big as the
White House!"

"Not quite," I answered, laughing with Archie. "We may as well take our
ease in our old age."

"Take our ease!" echoed Maude. "We'll rattle 'round in it. I'll never get
used to it."

"After a month, Mrs. Paret, I'll wager you'll be wondering how you ever
got along without it," said Archie.

It was not as big as the White House, yet it could not be called small. I
had seen, to that. The long facade was imposing, dignified, with a touch
of conventionality and solidity in keeping with my standing in the city.
It was Georgian, of plum-coloured brick with marble