evil do you find in that little
shrimp of a Hebrew to interest you? Is he cold that you warm him, or
hungry that you feed him,--or lonely that--"

"Stop right there, Holker! You've said it,--lonely--that's it--LONELY!
That's what made me bring him up the first time he was ever here.
It seemed such a wicked thing to me to have him at one end of the
house--the bottom end, too--crooning over a fire, and I at the top end
crooning over another, when one blaze could warm us both. So up he came,
Holker, and now it is I who am lonely when a week passes and Isaac does
not tap at my door, or I tap at his."

The distinguished architect understood it all a week later when the
new uptown synagogue was being talked of and he was invited to meet the
board, and found to his astonishment that the wise little man with the
big gold spectacles, occupying the chair was none other than Peter's
tailor.

"Our mutual friend Mr. Grayson, of the Exeter Bank, spoke to me about
you, Mr. Morris," said the little man without a trace of foreign accent
and with all the composure of a great banker making a government loan;
rising at the same time, with great dignity introducing Morris to his
brother trustees and then placing him in the empty seat next his own.
After that, and on more than one occasion, there were three chairs
around Peter's blaze, with Morris in one of them.

All these thoughts coursed through Peter's head as Jack and Cohen were
mounting the three flights of stairs.

"Ah, Isaac," he cried at first sight of his friend, "I just wanted you
to know my boy, Jack Breen, better, and as his legs are younger than
mine, I sent him down instead of going myself--you don't mind, do you?"

"Mind!--of course I do not mind,--but I do know Mr. Breen. I first met
him many months ago--when your sister was here--and then I see him going
in and out all the time--and--"

"Stop your nonsense, Isaac;--that's not the way to know a man; that's
the way not to know him, but what's more to the point is, I want Jack to
know you. These young fellows have very peculiar ideas about a good many
things,--and this boy is like all the rest--some of which ought to
be knocked out of his head,--your race, for one thing. He thinks that
because you are a Jew that you--"

Jack uttered a smothered, "Oh, Uncle Peter!" but the old fellow who now
had the tailor in one of his big chairs and was filling a thin wineglass
with a brown liquid (ten years in the wood)--Holker sent