be
mighty uncomfortable if you wore yours. Hurry up, we haven't a minute to
lose."

Peter had forced the architect into one of the big chairs by the fire
by this time, and stood bending over him, his hands resting on Morris's
broad shoulders.

"Take the Major with you, that's a good fellow, and let me drop in about
eleven o'clock," he pleaded, an expression on his face seen only when
two men understand and love each other. "There's a letter from Felicia
to attend to; she writes she is coming down for a couple of weeks, and
then I've really had a devil of a day at the bank."

"No, you old fraud, you can't wheedle me that way. I want you before
everybody sits down, so my young chaps can look you over. Why, Peter,
you're better than a whole course of lectures, and you mean something,
you beggar! I tell you" (here he lifted himself from the depths of the
chair and scrambled to his feet) "you've got to go if I have to tie
your hands and feet and carry you downstairs on my back! And you, too,
Major--both of you. Here's your overcoat--into it, you humbug!... the
other arm. Is this your hat? Out you go!" and before I had stopped
laughing--I had refused to crowd the cab--Morris had buttoned the
surtout over Peter's breast, crammed the straight-brimmed hat over his
eyes, and the two were clattering downstairs.

CHAPTER III

Long before the two had reached the top floor of the building in which
the dinner was to be given, they had caught the hum of the merrymakers,
the sound bringing a smile of satisfaction to Peter's face, but it was
when he entered the richly colored room itself, hazy with cigarette
smoke, and began to look into the faces of the guests grouped about him
and down the long table illumined by myriads of wax candles that all his
doubts and misgivings faded into thin air. Never since his school days,
he told me afterwards, had he seen so many boisterously happy young
fellows grouped together. And not only young fellows, with rosy
cheeks and bright eyes, but older men with thoughtful faces, who had
relinquished for a day the charge of some one of the important buildings
designed in the distinguished architect's office, and had spent the
night on the train that they might do honor to their Chief.

But it was when Morris, with his arm fast locked in his, began
introducing him right and left as the "Guest of Honor of the Evening,"
the two shaking hands first with one and then another, Morris breaking
out