“Well,” said the Judge, failing to observe Miss Rittingway’s protest, “there is a legal pleasantry which expresses itself in the query, ‘Who is to watch the trustee?’ I am going over there to arrange about the lunch for this interesting party, and then I am coming back to do some watching myself.” “Don’t you think,” I asked Miss Rittingway when the Judge had gone again, “that there is a touch of _particular_ amiability in the Judge’s manner?” “I think you had better go and help him about the luncheon,” was what Miss Rittingway said. [Illustration] [Illustration] VIII WITH A NICE MAN [Illustration] We sat in the “cave,” the smallest of Tranton’s rooms, and the one consecrated to his choicest company. Mere acquaintances were never asked into the “cave,” and even friends found that the place expressed certain moods in the owner. When Tranton said, “Let us go into the cave,” or shuffled mutely into the place in his barbarically embroidered slippers, and lighted the candles, the favored one understood. It was impossible to tell precisely why candles were used here rather than more modern agencies of illumination. When I once ventured to ask Tranton he simply said, “I like them.” In the candle light the “cave” looked to be a cross between a condensed studio and a business office. Rugs, skins, weapons, pipes, and trinkets littered the walls. There were other elements of conventional disorder. Over an oak desk in the corner were several photographs of women, an etching of Napoleon, a bow of yellow satin and a Turkish slipper filled with joss sticks. On the desk itself was a mess of literature and tobacco. Punctuating the triteness of the room were many little touches that were distinctively Trantonian, but which I spare publicity, lest they be repeated and thereby become trite in turn. Tranton himself personified something of the same conventionality relieved by difference. In the outer world he was so well dressed that no one ever spoke of his clothes, just as his place in society was so important and secure that no one ever called him a “society man.” He was old enough to have met a great many people; young enough still to have an open account with the affections. As Tranton always took the chair by the desk, and as this when occupied blocked the path of retreat, he first sent me to the couch among the pillows. Then he drew over some pipes and a curious Egyptian jar containing his favorite weed. The pipe he chose for himself was of the sort you will see an Italian trench laborer biting, a black, hardened, surly-looking pipe which Tranton caressed with a tenderness that is lavished only upon inexplicable pets.