ing
preparatory to leaving the room.

Peter's fingers closed tight: "I'm not so sure of that," he answered
gravely.

Miss Felicia had risen from her seat and was now bending over the back
of his chair, her spare sharp elbows resting on its edge, her two hands
clasping his cheeks.

"And are you really going to add this stupid boy to your string,
you goose of a Peter?" she asked in a bantering tone, as her fingers
caressed his temples. "Don't forget Mosenthal and little Perkins, and
the waiter you brought home and fed for a week, and sent away in your
best overcoat, which he pawned the next day; or the two boys at college.
Aren't you ever going to learn?" and she leaned forward and kissed the
top of his bald head.

Peter's only reply was to reach up and smooth her jewelled fingers with
his own. He remembered them all; there was an excuse, of course,
he reminded her, for his action in each and every case. But for him
Mosenthal--really a great violinist--would have starved, little Perkins
would have been sent to the reformatory, and the waiter to the dogs.
That none of them, except the two college boys, had ever thanked him for
his assistance--a fact well known to Miss Felicia--never once crossed
his mind--wouldn't have made any difference if it had.

"But this young Breen is worth saving, Felicia," he answered at last.

"From what--the penitentiary?" she laughed--this time with a slight note
of anger in her voice.

"No, you foolish thing--much worse."

"From what, then?"

"From himself."

Long after his sister had left the room Peter kept his seat by the fire,
his eyes gazing into the slumbering coals. His holiday had been a happy
one until Jack's entrance: Morris had come to an early breakfast and
had then run down and dragged up Cohen so that he could talk with him in
comfort and away from the smell of the tailor's goose and the noise of
the opening and shutting of the shop door; Miss Felicia had summoned
all her good humor and patience (she did not always approve of Peter's
acquaintances--the little tailor being one), and had received Cohen as
she would have done a savant from another country--one whose personal
appearance belied his intellect but who on no account must be made aware
of that fact, and Peter himself had spent the hour before and after
breakfast--especially the hour after, when the Bank always claimed
him--in pulling out and putting back one book after another from the
shelves of his small l