ore Mr. Lammerton had arrived among us with a Beaux
Arts moustache and letters of introduction to Mrs. Durrett and others.
We found him the most adaptable, the most accommodating of young
men, always ready to donate his talents and his services to private
theatricals, tableaux, and fancy-dress balls, to take a place at a
table at the last moment. One of his most appealing attributes was his
"belief" in our city,--a form of patriotism that culminated, in later
years, in "million population" clubs. I have often heard him declare,
when the ladies had left the dining-room, that there was positively no
limit to our future growth; and, incidentally, to our future wealth.
Such sentiments as these could not fail to add to any man's popularity,
and his success was a foregone conclusion. Almost before we knew it he
was building the new Union Station of which he had foreseen the need,
to take care of the millions to which our population was to be swelled;
building the new Post Office that the unceasing efforts of Theodore
Watling finally procured for us: building, indeed, Nancy's new house,
the largest of our private mansions save Mr. Scherer's, a commission
that had immediately brought about others from the Dickinsons and the
Berringers.... That very day I called on him in his offices at the top
of one of our new buildings, where many young draftsmen were bending
over their boards. I was ushered into his private studio.

"I suppose you want something handsome, Hugh," he said, looking at me
over his cigarette, "something commensurate with these fees I hear you
are getting."

"Well, I want to be comfortable," I admitted.

We lunched at the Club together, where we talked over the requirements.

When he came to dinner the next week and spread out his sketch on the
living-room table Maude drew in her breath.

"Why, Hugh," she exclaimed in dismay, "it's as big as--as big as the
White House!"

"Not quite," I answered, laughing with Archie. "We may as well take our
ease in our old age."

"Take our ease!" echoed Maude. "We'll rattle 'round in it. I'll never
get used to it."

"After a month, Mrs. Paret, I'll wager you'll be wondering how you ever
got along without it," said Archie.

It was not as big as the White House, yet it could not be called small.
I had seen, to that. The long facade was imposing, dignified, with a
touch of conventionality and solidity in keeping with my standing in the
city. It was Georgian, of plum-colou