window and raise the sash. Leaning out, he let the hat drop into
Broadway, with his eyes just over the line of the ledge while he watched
it fall, dipping and gliding, to the feet of a messenger boy, who picked
it up, waved it gleefully aloft before putting it over his cap, and with
mock strides of grandeur went his way.

"That gave him a lot of pleasure--and a remarkably quick system for
delivering goods, wasn't it?" said Jack, cheerfully.

"Yes, I should say so!" assented his father, returning to his seat.
"Dinner at seven!" he called before the door closed; and as his finger
sought one of the push-buttons it rested for a moment on the metal edge
of the socket, his head bowed, while an indefinable emotion, mixed of
prophecy and recollection, must have fluttered through the routine
channels of his vigorous mind.

XXV

"BUT WITH YOU, 'YES, SIR'"

As Jack came out of the office, Mortimer appeared from an adjoining room
in furtive, mouselike curiosity.

"Not much damage done!" said Jack, in happy relief from the ordeal. "I am
without a hat, but I have the rose." He held it up before Mortimer's
worn, kindly face that had been so genuine in welcome. "Yes, I must have
kept it to decorate you, Peter!"

Ineffectually, in timorous confusion, the old secretary protested while
Jack fastened it in his buttonhole.

"And you are going to help me, aren't you, Peter?" Jack went on,
seriously. "You are going to hold up a finger of warning when I get off
the course. I am to be practical, matter-of-fact; there's to be an end to
all fantastic ideas."

An end to all fantastic ideas! But it was hardly according to the gospel
of the matter-of-fact to take Burleigh, the fitter, out to luncheon. Jack
might excuse himself on the ground that he had not yet begun his
apprenticeship and had several hours of freedom before his first lesson
at dinner. This ecstasy of a recess, perhaps, made him lay aside the
derby, which the clerk said was very becoming, and choose a softer
head-covering with a bit of feather in the band, which the clerk, with
positive enthusiasm, said was still more becoming. At all events, it was
easy on his temples, while the derby was stiff and binding and conducive
to a certain depression of spirits.

Burleigh, the fitter, was almost as old as Mortimer. He rose to the
exceptional situation, his eyes lighting as he surveyed the form to be
clothed with a professional gratification unsurpassed by that of Dr.