“How could you be so late?” said some one presently. “I watched out of the window for nearly an hour.” “My train was late. The time-table on that road is simply a satire!” said Peter. Yet it is the best managed road in the country, and this particular train was only seven minutes overdue. “You have been to ride, though,” said Leonore. “No. I have an engagement to ride with a disagreeable girl after breakfast, so I dressed for it.” “Suppose the disagreeable girl should break her engagement—or declare there never was one?” “She won’t,” said Peter. “It may not have been put in the contract, but the common law settles it beyond question.” Leonore laughed a happy laugh. Then she asked: “For whom are those violets?” “I had to go to four places before I could get any at this season,” said Peter. “Ugly girls are just troublesome enough to have preferences. What will you give me for them?” “Some of them,” said Leonore, and obtained the bunch. Who dares to say after that that women have no business ability nor shrewdness? It is true that she kissed the fraction returned before putting it in Peter’s button-hole, which raises the question which had the best of the bargain. “I’m behind the curtain, so I can’t see anything,” said a voice from a doorway, “and therefore you needn’t jump; but I wish to inquire if you two want any breakfast?” A few days later Peter again went up the steps of the Fifty-seventh Street house. This practice was becoming habitual with Peter; in fact, so habitual that his cabby had said to him this very day, “The old place, sir?” Where Peter got the time it is difficult to understand, considering that his law practice was said to be large, and his political occupations just at present not small. But that is immaterial. The simple fact that Peter went up the steps is the essential truth. From the steps, he passed into a door; from the door he passed into a hall; from a hall he passed into a room; from a room he passed into a pair of arms. “Thank the Lord, you’ve come,” Watts remarked. “Leonore has up and down refused to make the tea till you arrived.” “I was at headquarters, and they would talk, talk, talk,” said Peter. “I get out of patience with them. One would think the destinies of the human race depended on this campaign!” “So the Growley should have his tea,” said a vision, now seated on the lounge at the tea-table. “Then Growley will feel better.” “I’m doing that already,” said Growley, sitting down on the delightfully short lounge—now such a fashionable and deservedly popular drawing-room article. “May I tell you how you can make me absolutely contented?” “I suppose that will mean some favor from me,” said Leonore. “I don’t like children who want to be bribed out of their bad temper. Nice little boys are never bad-tempered.” “I was only bad-tempered,” whispered Peter, “because I was kept from being with you. That’s cause enough to make the best-tempered man in the universe murderous.”