s coat and hat, and Parkins
stood with his hand on the door-knob. Then, to the consternation of
both master and servant, the great man darted forward and seized Peter's
hand.

"Why, my dear Mr. Grayson! This is indeed a pleasure. I didn't see
you--were you inside?"

"No--I've been upstairs with young Mr. Breen," replied Peter, with a
comprehensive bow to Host, Magnate and Magnate's daughter. Then, with
the grace and dignity of an ambassador quitting a salon, he passed out
into the night.

Breen found his breath first: "And you know him?"

"Know him!" cried the Magnate--"of course I know him! One of the most
delightful men in New York; and I'm glad that you do--you're luckier
than I--try as I may I can hardly ever get him inside my house."

I was sitting up for the old fellow when he entered his cosey red room
and dropped into a chair before the fire. I had seen the impression the
young man had made upon him at the dinner and was anxious to learn the
result of his visit. I had studied the boy somewhat myself, noting
his bright smile, clear, open face without a trace of guile, and the
enthusiasm that took possession of him when his friend won the prize
That he was outside the class of young men about him I could see from
a certain timidity of glance and gesture--as if he wanted to be kept in
the background. Would the old fellow, I wondered, burden his soul with
still another charge?

Peter was laughing when he entered; he had laughed all the way
down-town, he told me. What particularly delighted him--and here he
related the Portman incident--was the change in Breen's face when old
Portman grasped his hand so cordially.

"Made of pinchbeck, my dear Major, both of them, and yet how genuine it
looks on the surface, and what a lot of it is in circulation. Quite as
good as the real thing if you don't know the difference," and again he
laughed heartily.

"And the boy," I asked, "was he disappointing?"

"Young Breen?--not a bit of it. He's like all the young fellows who come
up here from the South--especially the country districts--and he's
from western Maryland, he says. Got queer ideas about work and what a
gentleman should do to earn his living--same old talk. Hot-house plants
most of them--never amount to anything, really, until they are pruned
and set out in the cold."

"Got any sense?" I ventured.

"No, not much--not yet--but he's got temperament and refinement and a
ten commandments' code of morals."

"Ra