Finding Uncle Peter uncommunicative, he mused during the remainder of the ride, envying the careless ease with which Percival and his friends, and even Uncle Peter, wore the prescribed evening regalia of gentlemen, and yearning for the distinguished effect of its black and white elegance upon himself. They went to their connecting rooms, and Billy Brue regretfully sought his bed, marvelling how free people in a town like New York could ever bring themselves to waste time in sleep. As he dozed off, he could hear the slow, measured tread of Uncle Peter pacing the floor in the next room. He was awakened by hearing his name called. Uncle Peter stood in a flood of light at the door of his room. He was fully dressed. "Awake, Billy?" "Is it gittin'-up time?" The old man came into the room and lighted a gas-jet. He looked at his watch. "No; only a quarter to four. I ain't been to bed yet." Billy Brue sat up and rubbed his eyes. "Rheumatiz again, Uncle Peter?" "No; I been thinkin', Billy. How do you like the game?" He began to pace the floor again from one room to the other. "What game?'! Billy Brue had encountered a number in New York. "This whole game--livin' in New York." Mr. Brue became judicial. "It's a good game as long as you got money to buy chips. I'd hate like darnation to go broke here. All the pay-claims have been located, I guess." "I doubt it's bein' a good game any time, Billy. I been actin' as kind of a lookout now fur about forty days and forty nights, and the chances is all in favour of the house. You don't even get half your money on the high card when the splits come." Billy Brue pondered this sentiment. It was not his own. "The United States of America is all right, Billy." This was safe ground. "Sure!" His mind reverted to the evening just past. "Of course there was a couple of Clarences in high collars there to-night that made out like they was throwin' it down; but they ain't the whole thing, not by a long shot." "Yes, and that young shrimp that was talkin' about 'vintages' and 'trouserings.'" The old man paused in his walk. "What _are_ 'trouserings,' Billy?" Mr. Brue had not looked into shop windows day after day without enlarging his knowledge. "Trouserings," he proclaimed, rather importantly, "is the cloth they make pants out of." "Oh! is that all? I didn't know but it might be some new kind of duds. And that fellow don't ever get up till eleven o'clock A.M. I don't reckon I would myself if I didn't have anything but trouserings and vintages to worry about. And that Van Arsdel boy!" "Say!" said Billy, with enthusiasm, "I never thought I'd be even in the same room with one of that family, 'less I prized open the door with a jimmy." "Well, who's _he?_ My father knew his grandfather when he kep' tavern over on the Raritan River, and his grandmother!--this shrimp's grandmother!--she tended bar." "Gee!"