any impression of a want of perspicuity in his first estimate of Peter's
situation. He kept it up for the reason perhaps that men friends are
meant for each other from the beginning of time quite as much as we are
accustomed to thinking of them as being meant for the lovely ladies whom
they so frequently miss. Lessing was about Peter's own age and had large
and cheerful notions of the probable increase of real-estate values in
Pleasanton, combined with a just appreciation of the simple shrewdness
which had so recommended Peter to his employers.

"You'd be a crackerjack to talk to the old ladies," Lessing generously
praised him. "I scare 'em; they think I'm too hopeful." That he didn't,
however, have the same effect on young ladies was apparent from the very
pretty one whom Peter used to see about, especially on early closing
Saturday afternoons, helping him to shut up the office and get off to
the ball game. He couldn't have told why, but those were the days when
Peter allowed the car to carry him on to the next block, before
alighting, after which he would make a point of being particularly kind
to Ellen. It would never do for her to get a notion that the tapping of
her crutch beside him had scared anything out of Peter's life which he
might think worth having in it.

Along toward Thanksgiving time, on an occasion when Peter had just
missed his car and had to wait for another one, Lessing--J. B. on the
door sign, though he was the sort that everybody who knew him called
Julian--came quite out to the pavement and stood there with his hands
in his pockets and his hair beginning to curl boyishly in the dampness,
quite brimming over with good fortune. Singularly he didn't mention it
at once, but began to complain about the low state of the market in real
estate.

"Not but that the values are all right," he was careful to explain;
"it's just that they _are_ all right makes it so trying. If a fellow had
a little capital now, he could do wonders. The deuce of a chap like me
is that he hasn't any capital unless there's some buying."

"You think it's a good time then to lay out a little money?"

"Good! _Good!_ Oh, Lord, it's so good that if a fellow had a few
thousands just put around judiciously, he wouldn't be able to sleep
nights for hearing it turn over." He kicked the gravel in sheer
impatience. "How's your sister?"

It was a formula that he had kept on with because to have dropped it
immediately might have betraye