A first interview with the Hon. J. W. Cabot, senior member of the firm of Cabot, Hollingsworth & Perry, generally resulted in a belief that this distinguished lawyer was a severe, unsympathetic man whose dignity, under ordinary pressure, was not likely to abate. An abundant crop of short gray hair covered a square, well-shaped head; a head that seemed hard and strong. His forehead, his jaw, and his shoulders were also square, and they also seemed hard and strong. His manner was cold, his voice firm and even, and he was never ruffled. The cool gray eyes rested calmly upon you as if screening, out of consideration for your own fallacious knowledge, the profundity of wisdom that reposed behind them. His memory seemed infallible. The extent and accuracy of his legal knowledge was a perpetual surprise, even to his partners. For simplifying complex entanglements his clearness and rapidity amounted to a genius. His fees were colossal. In short, he seemed just the man who would never write such a note as this: TOWHEAD: I SHALL bring an old friend to dinner to-night. Don’t give us rubber olives or shad of last year’s vintage. He is not a bric-à-brac shop. JIMSEY. This document was sent to his daughter, who since her mother’s death, three years ago, had managed the household. When a child of five she overheard a friend address him frequently as Jim, whereupon she adjusted a final syllable to render it less formal, and ever after continued to use it. It was an afternoon in March that this note arrived, nearly four months after the ball at the Van Koovers’, and when, an hour or two later, her father presented his old friend, Mr. Samuel Fettiplace, she was struck by his enormous frame and by the extraordinary color of his face. This color, a blazing, resplendent red, not only occupied his nose and cheeks, but extended, in quieter tones, over his forehead and neck, even to the bald spot upon the top of his head. It had every appearance of being that expensive decoration that can only be procured by a prolonged and conscientious indulgence in the choicest Burgundies. His large, round, light-blue eyes were all the bluer from their crimson setting. A more honest pair she had never seen. These, with his silver hair and benevolent forehead, gave the impression of a pleasantly intemperate bishop. Molly Cabot well knew that her father, and especially her mother, could never have achieved a warm and lasting friendship for one whose habits were honestly represented by such compromising colors.