"You'd be a crackerjack to talk to the old ladies," Lessing generously praised him. "I scare 'em; they think I'm too hopeful." That he didn't, however, have the same effect on young ladies was apparent from the very pretty one whom Peter used to see about, especially on early closing Saturday afternoons, helping him to shut up the office and get off to the ball game. He couldn't have told why, but those were the days when Peter allowed the car to carry him on to the next block, before alighting, after which he would make a point of being particularly kind to Ellen. It would never do for her to get a notion that the tapping of her crutch beside him had scared anything out of Peter's life which he might think worth having in it. Along toward Thanksgiving time, on an occasion when Peter had just missed his car and had to wait for another one, Lessing--J. B. on the door sign, though he was the sort that everybody who knew him called Julian--came quite out to the pavement and stood there with his hands in his pockets and his hair beginning to curl boyishly in the dampness, quite brimming over with good fortune. Singularly he didn't mention it at once, but began to complain about the low state of the market in real estate. "Not but that the values are all right," he was careful to explain; "it's just that they _are_ all right makes it so trying. If a fellow had a little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like me is that he hasn't any capital unless there's some buying." "You think it's a good time then to lay out a little money?" "Good! _Good!_ Oh, Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a few thousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleep nights for hearing it turn over." He kicked the gravel in sheer impatience. "How's your sister?" It was a formula that he had kept on with because to have dropped it immediately might have betrayed the extenuating nature of its inception, and besides there were so many directions in which one might start conversationally off from it. He made use of it now without waiting for Peter's habitual "Very well, thank you," by a burst into confidence. "You see I'm engaged to be married--yes, I guess you've seen me with her. Fact is, I haven't cared how much people have seen so long as she's seen it, too; and now we've got it all fixed up, naturally I'm on the make. I'm dashed if I don't think I'll have to take a partner." "I've been wanting to speak to you about some property of mine," Peter ventured. "It's a farm up country." "What's it worth?" "Well, I've added to it some the last ten years and made considerable improvement. I ought to get three thousand." "That's for farming? For summer residence it ought to bring more than that. Any scenery?" "Plenty," Peter satisfied him on that score. "I've been thinking," he let out shyly, "that if I could put the price of it in some place where I could watch it, the money would do me more good...."