had thrown
out from it for his mother. She was always there with him now until the
day of her death and long after, made a part of all his dreaming by the
touch with which she had limned in herself for him, the feature of all
Lovely Ladies.

He would write her long letters into which crept much that had been
uttered only in the House, which that winter became an estate in
Florida, moved there because of Mrs. Weatheral's need of mild climate.
They went abroad after the Christmas Holidays in which she had coughed
more than usual and consented to have her breakfast brought up to bed,
setting out every evening from Peter's reading-lamp and arriving very
shortly at Italian Cathedrals and old Roman seaport towns that smelled
of history.

Dreaming of lovely ladies who have no face or form other than they
borrow from the passing incident is a very pleasant way of passing the
time, and does not necessarily lead to anything; but when a man goes
about afraid lest his mother should die for lack of something he might
have got for her, he dreams closer at home. More than ever since the
revelation of his mother's frailness, Peter dreamed of being rich, and
since there was nothing nearer to him than the way Siegel Brothers had
managed it, he devoted so much time to the scrutiny of their methods
that he passed in a very short time from being head of the delivery
department to the right hand of Mr. Croker. Even Blinders could not
recall, in the three years he had been bundle boy, so marked an example
of favouritism.

"They don't make partners any more out of underlings," Croker let him
know confidentially. "What do you think you're headed for?" Peter
explained himself.

"I wanted to find out how they did it."

"And when you find out," Croker wagged at him, "you won't be able to do
anything with it. You have to have capital. Look at the time I've been
with them!"

"How long is that?" Peter was interested.

"Twenty years." Croker told him.

"In twenty years," Peter was confident, "a man ought to be able to find
some capital." After that he began to observe Mr. Croker.

It is probable at this time that if he had not been concerned for his
mother's health, he might have grown as dry and uninteresting as at
Blodgett's they began to think him.

He was a thin young man with hair of no particular colour, and eyes
that were good and rather shy about women. He went out very little and
had not, Miss Thatcher who sat opposite him was s