"My God, no!" said Graham. "I shall get it all back of course; otherwise,--Phut! As to telling father,--well--well, do you ever tell father anything? I'd rather face electrocution than go into father's room with such a tale. Once before--about six months ago--when I had to meet a bill for five thousand dollars, I had a little talk with mother, and after she had a fit she gave me a handful of her jewels to pawn. She was afraid of father, too. Within two months I got them out again. Steel did me very well that time; and mother,--bless her dear heart!--called me a very clever boy, and said: 'What a brain you have, darling, but please don't do it again!' Oh, my God, Peter! You don't know what Wall Street means. It's hell! It's marvellous! It's life! One of these days when a real good chance comes I'll go some plunge, and then you'll see me living quietly in the country breeding ponies or dogs or chickens or something, and I'll marry and settle down." Peter got up, re-loaded his pipe, and said: "Just think of it! You're two years younger than I am. I've not begun to live and you're in the whirl of money and risk. In the meantime there's father so busy experimenting with microbes that he hasn't one idea of what his boys are doing, or are likely to do--absolutely content to let them find their feet unaided! Well, I suppose he knows what he's doing,--but what you've just told me makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be wise for him to experiment a little bit with us for a change. What d'you think?" Graham shrugged his shoulders. With the light on his face he looked older than his brother, and there was something in his eyes which showed that he had already gazed at life very much more closely than the big healthy fellow who was his host. "Oh, well," he said--pouring himself out a rather stiff whiskey--"we've never known quite what it was to have a father,--I mean except as a sort of aloof institution, a vague person who educated us and placed us out. I should resent his butting in now. There's someone coming up your stairs, isn't there?" There was. It was Kenyon, who rattled money in his trousers pocket with a little smile at the corners of his sophisticated mouth. V Peter put in the time of his life during the next few days, and like the great big simple fellow that he was, revelled in being the little hero of his family.