But this is only the cold vestibule--the “piaz” of my story. Come in, dear reader. There's a cheerful blaze and a comfortable chair in the chimney-corner. Make yourself at home, and now my story's begun exactly where I began to live in it--inside the big country house of a client of mine, an hour's ride from New York. His name wasn't Whitfield Norris, and so we will call him that. His age was about fifty-five, his name well known. If ever a man was born for friendship he was the man--a kindly but strong face, genial blue eyes, and the love of good fellowship. But he had few friends and no intimates beyond his family circle. True, he had a gruff voice and a broken nose, and was not much of a talker. Of Norris, the financier, many knew more or less; of Norris, the man, he and his family seemed to enjoy a monopoly of information. It was not quite a monopoly, however, as I discovered when I began to observe the deep undercurrents of his life. Right away he asked me to look at them. Norris had written that he wished to consult me, and was forbidden by his doctor to go far from his country house, where he was trying to rest. Years before he had put a detail of business in my hands, and I had had some luck with it. His glowing wife and daughter met me at the railroad-station with a glowing footman and a great, glowing limousine. The wife was a restored masterpiece of the time of Andrew Johnson--by which I mean that she was a very handsome woman, whose age varied from thirty to fifty-five, according to the day and the condition of your eyesight. She trained more or less in fashionable society, and even coughed with an English accent. The daughter was a lovely blonde, blue-eyed girl of twenty. She was tall and substantial--built for all weather and especially well-roofed--a real human being, with sense enough to laugh at my jokes and other serious details in her environment. We arrived at the big, plain, comfortable house just in time for luncheon. Norris met me at the door. He looked pale and careworn, but greeted me playfully, and I remarked that he seemed to be feeling his oats. “Feeling my oats! Well, I should say so,” he answered. “No man's oats ever filled him with deeper feeling.” Like so many American business men, his brain had all feet in the trough, so to speak, and was getting more than its share of blood, while the other vital organs in his system were probably only half fed.