“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 into joyous salvos of welcome over some arrival from a distant city, or greeting with marked kindness and courtesy one of the younger men from his own office, that the old fellow's enthusiasm became uncontrollable. “Isn't it glorious, Holker!” he cried joyously, with uplifted hands. “Oh, I'm so glad I came! I wouldn't have missed this for anything in the world. Did you ever see anything like it? This is classic, my boy--it has the tang and the spice of the ancients.” Morris's greeting to me was none the less hearty, although he had left me but half an hour before. “Late, as I expected, Major,” he cried with out-stretched hand, “and serves you right for not sitting in Peter's lap in the cab. Somebody ought to sit on him once in a while. He's twenty years younger already. Here, take this seat alongside of me where you can keep him in order--they were at table when I entered. Waiter, bring back that bottle--Just a light claret, Major--all we allow ourselves.”