d the extenuating nature of its inception,
and besides there were so many directions in which one might start
conversationally off from it. He made use of it now without waiting for
Peter's habitual "Very well, thank you," by a burst into confidence.

"You see I'm engaged to be married--yes, I guess you've seen me with
her. Fact is, I haven't cared how much people have seen so long as she's
seen it, too; and now we've got it all fixed up, naturally I'm on the
make. I'm dashed if I don't think I'll have to take a partner."

"I've been wanting to speak to you about some property of mine," Peter
ventured. "It's a farm up country."

"What's it worth?"

"Well, I've added to it some the last ten years and made considerable
improvement. I ought to get three thousand."

"That's for farming? For summer residence it ought to bring more than
that. Any scenery?"

"Plenty," Peter satisfied him on that score. "I've been thinking," he
let out shyly, "that if I could put the price of it in some place where
I could watch it, the money would do me more good...."

Lessing turned on him a suddenly brightening eye.

"That's the talk--say, you know I think I could get you forty-five
hundred for that farm of yours anyway." They looked at one another on
the verge of things hopeful and considerable. As Peter's car swung
around the curve, suddenly they blushed, both of them, and reached out
and shook hands.

That evening as Peter came home he saw Lessing buying chrysanthemums at
the florist's with a happy countenance, and to master the queer pang it
gave him, Peter got off the car and walked a long way out on the dim wet
pavement. He was looking at the bright picture of Lessing and the
girl--she was really very pretty--and seeing instead, himself, quite the
bachelor, and his lame sister taking their blameless dull way in the
world. He couldn't any more for the life of him, get a picture of
himself without Ellen in it; the tapping of her crutch sounded even in
the House when he visited it in his dreams. It was well on this occasion
that he had Ellen beside him, for she showed him the way presently to
take it, as he knew she would take it as soon as he went home and told
her--as another door by which they could enter sympathetically in the
joyousness they were denied. She would be so pleased for Julian's sake,
in whom, by Peter's account of him, she took the greatest interest, and
so pleased for the girl to have such a handsome, capable