“Oh, not at all,” replied Horace. “Mr. Tracy, for example, has railroad business which he keeps to himself. He is the attorney for this section of the road, and of course that is a personal appointment. He couldn’t share it with me, any more than the man in the story could make his wife and children corporals because he had been made one himself. Besides, Mr. Tracy was expressly mentioned by your mother as not to be included in the transfer of business. It was her notion.” “Ah, indeed!” said that young woman, with a slight instantaneous lifting of the black brows which Horace did not catch. “Why? Isn’t he nice?” “Well, yes; he’s an extremely good fellow, in his way,” the partner admitted, looking down at his glossy boots in well-simulated hesitation. “That little word ‘nice’ means so many things upon feminine lips, you know,” he added with a smile. “Perhaps he wouldn’t answer your definition of it all around. He’s very honest, and he is a prodigious worker, but--well, to be frank, he’s farm bred, and I daresay your mother suspected the existence of--what shall I say?--an uncouth side? Really, I don’t think that there was anything more than that in it.” “So you furnish the polish, and he the honesty and industry? Is that it?” The words were distinctly unpleasant, and Horace looked up swiftly to the speaker’s face, feeling that his own was flushed. But Miss Kate was smiling at him, with a quizzical light dancing in her eyes, and this reassured him on the instant. Evidently she felt herself on easy terms with him, and this was merely a bit of playful chaff. “We don’t put it quite in that way,” he said, with an answering laugh. “It would be rather egotistical, on both sides.” “Nowadays everybody resents that imputation as if it were a cardinal sin. There was a time when self-esteem was taken for granted. I suppose it went out with chain-armor and farthingales.” She spoke in a musing tone, and added after a tiny pause, “That must have been a happy time, at least for those who wore the armor and the brocades.” Horace leaped with avidity at the opening. “Those were the days of romance,” he said, with an effort at the cooing effect in his voice. “Perhaps they were not so altogether lovely as our fancy paints them; but, all the same, it is very sweet to have the fancy. Whether it be historically true or not, those who possess it are rich in their own mind’s right. They can always escape from the grimy and commercial conditions of this present work-a-day life. All one’s finer senses can feed, for example, on a glowing account of an old-time tournament--with the sun shining on the armor and burnished shields, and the waving plumes and iron-clad horses and the heralds in tabards, and the rows of fair ladies clustered about the throne--as it is impossible to do on the report of a meeting of a board of directors, even when they declare you an exceptionally large dividend.”