It seemed curious that at this time Douglas Briggs should have found solace in the companionship of Guy Fullerton. The boy’s eager interest in life and his simplicity of mind amused and interested the older man. In spite of his four years of money-spending at Harvard, Guy had not been spoiled; at moments his ingenuousness was almost childish. Douglas Briggs found that with Guy he could discuss matters he would shrink from mentioning in the presence of sophisticated and hardened men. In Guy, too, he saw many of the qualities that he himself had had as a boy, though he recognized that long before reaching his secretary’s age he had outgrown most of them. In his dread of being alone he made pretexts for keeping the boy with him in his few hours of leisure during the day. In the late afternoon they would walk from the house to the club where Briggs would let Guy order the dinner. They had a table reserved for them in the bay-window of the dining-room, by George, the fat and pompous head-waiter, whose display of teeth at the appearance of Douglas Briggs suggested the memory of a long line of tips. After finishing the meal they would often linger, sipping claret punch which Briggs allowed himself to encourage Guy to drink. He had begun to feel a paternal fondness for Guy; he enjoyed formulating before the young fellow a philosophy of life and offering stray bits of advice. Guy’s admiration for him stimulated him and, though he would have hated to acknowledge the fact, it supported him in a good opinion of himself. If in his talks there were matters that occurred to his mind only to be immediately suppressed, the reason was not less because he wished to conceal certain aspects of life from the boy than because he wished to keep the boy’s admiration untarnished. Occasionally he wondered if he ought not to do something for Guy, if he were not selfish in his keeping him in a kind of life that might harm him. If the young fellow stayed long enough in Washington he would probably become one of those miserable creatures whose days were spent in hanging on to the soiled skirts of the Government. It would be a pity to see Guy, for example, in the army of clerks who, at nine o’clock each day, poured into the Government offices and streamed out again at four in the afternoon. Briggs said to himself that he ought to find a chance for Guy to do work into some sort of independence where he could develop those qualities of faithfulness and intelligence that were plainly his inheritance even if they were somewhat obscured by his boyishness.