ouse there was no one to laugh at her but Peter, and when
Peter laughed she considered it a triumph. It meant that there was
something she said that he liked. The welcome she had received as a
guest in his house and the wonderful evening that succeeded it were
among the epoch making hours in Eleanor's life. It had happened in
this wise.

The Hutchinson victoria, for Grandmother Hutchinson still clung to the
old-time, stately method of getting about the streets of New York, had
left her at Peter's door at six o'clock of a keen, cool May evening.
Margaret had not been well enough to come with her, having been
prostrated by one of the headaches of which she was a frequent
victim.

The low door of ivory white, beautifully carved and paneled, with its
mammoth brass knocker, the row of window boxes along the cornice a few
feet above it, the very look of the house was an experience and an
adventure to her. When she rang, the door opened almost instantly
revealing Peter on the threshold with his arms open. He had led her up
two short flights of stairs--ivory white with carved banisters, she
noticed, all as immaculately shining with soap and water as a Cape Cod
interior--to his own gracious drawing-room where Mrs. Finnigan was
bowing and smiling a warmhearted Irish welcome to her. It was like a
wonderful story in a book and her eyes were shining with joy as Uncle
Peter pulled out her chair and she sat down to the first meal in her
honor. The grown up box of candy at her plate, the grave air with
which Peter consulted her tastes and her preferences were all a part
of a beautiful magic that had never quite touched her before.

She had been like a little girl in a dream passing dutifully or
delightedly through the required phases of her experience, never quite
believing in its permanence or reality; but her life with Uncle Peter
was going to be real, and her own. That was what she felt the moment
she stepped over his threshold.

After their coffee before the open fire--she herself had had "cambric"
coffee--Peter smoked his cigar, while she curled up in silence in the
twin to his big cushioned chair and sampled her chocolates. The blue
flames skimmed the bed of black coals, and finally settled steadily at
work on them nibbling and sputtering until the whole grate was like a
basket full of molten light, glowing and golden as the hot sun when it
sinks into the sea.

Except to offer her the ring about his slender Panatela, and to