right
people. If you know them, you can practise law, or practise billiards,
or practise anything else that you fancy. If you don't know them, you
might as well go practise in Dahomey, for all you can accomplish. You
might come on here and start in for yourself, and in twenty years you
wouldn't get as far as you can get in two weeks, if you'll let me
attend to it."

Montague was nearly five years his brother's senior, and at home had
taken a semi-paternal attitude toward him. Now, however, the situation
seemed to have reversed itself. With a slight smile of amusement, he
subsided, and proceeded to put himself into the attitude of a docile
student of the mysteries of the Metropolis.

They agreed that they would say nothing about these matters to the
others. Mrs. Montague was half blind, and would lead her placid, indoor
existence with old Mammy Lucy. As for Alice, she was a woman, and would
not trouble herself with economics; if fairy godmothers chose to shower
gifts upon her, she would take them.

Alice was built to live in a palace, anyway, Oliver said. He had cried
out with delight when he first saw her. She had been sixteen when he
left, and tall and thin; now she was nineteen, and with the pale tints
of the dawn in her hair and face. In the auto, Oliver had turned and,
stared at her, and pronounced the cryptic judgment, "You'll go!"

Just now she was wandering about the rooms, exclaiming with wonder.
Everything here was so quiet and so harmonious that at first one's
suspicions were lulled. It was simplicity, but of a strange and
perplexing kind--simplicity elaborately studied. It was luxury, but
grown assured of itself, and gazing down upon itself with aristocratic
disdain. And after a while this began to penetrate the vulgarest mind,
and to fill it with awe; one cannot remain long in an apartment which
is trimmed and furnished in rarest Circassian walnut, and "papered"
with hand-embroidered silk cloth, without feeling some excitement--even
though there be no one to mention that the furniture has cost eight
thousand dollars per room, and that the wall covering has been imported
from Paris at a cost of seventy dollars per yard.

Montague also betook himself to gazing about. He noted the great double
windows, with sashes of bronze; the bronze fire-proof doors; the bronze
electric candles and chandeliers, from which the room was flooded with
a soft radiance at the touch of a button; the "duchesse" and "marquise"