He told them, very simply, he did not expect ever again to spend such pleasant years anywhere as at the old office; and as for his spells of ill-temper--oh, yes, they needn’t shake their heads; he knew he often was irritable--he had meant well and trusted they would forgive him. If he had his life to live over again he would try really to deserve all that they had said of him on this evening. And he was very, very sorry to leave them. “Very sorry, boys; very sorry. _Very_ sorry!” he finished lamely, with a wistful smile. He shook hands with each man--a strong grip, as though he were about to go on a journey from which he might never return--and in his heart of hearts there was a new doubt of the wisdom of going to Wall Street. But it was too late to draw back. They escorted him to his house. They wished to be with him to the last possible minute. III Everybody in the drug trade seemed to think that Gilmartin was on the highroad to Fortune. Those old business acquaintances and former competitors whom he happened to meet in the street-cars or in the theatre lobbies always spoke to him as to a millionaire-to-be, in what they imagined was correct Wall Street jargon, to show him that they too knew something of the great game. But their efforts made him smile with a sense of superiority, at the same time that their admiration for his cleverness and their good-natured envy for his luck made his soul thrill joyously. Among his new friends in Wall Street also he found much to enjoy. The other customers--some of them very wealthy men--listened to his views regarding the market as attentively as he, later, felt it his polite duty to listen to theirs. The brokers themselves treated him as a “good fellow.” They cajoled him into trading often--every one hundred shares he bought or sold meant $12.50 to them--and when he won, they praised his unerring discernment. When he lost they soothed him by scolding him for his recklessness--just as a mother will treat her three-year-old’s fall as a great joke in order to deceive the child into laughing at its misfortune. It was an average office with an average clientèle.