g-man is in the matter
of talk, the easier it is for 'im to get a plice. If you ask me, sir, I
would s'y as chairs is wooden and walls stone an' brick for the comfort
of their betters, an' that they 'aven't any too much discretion as it
is, let alone talking."

"Nelton," said Lewis, "I've been waiting to ask you something. I wonder
if you could tell me."

"Can't s'y in the dark," said Nelton.

"It's this," said Lewis. "Everybody here--all dad's friends except Lady
Derl--call him Grapes Leighton. Why? I've started to ask him two or
three times, but somehow something else seems to crop up in his mind,
and he doesn't give me a chance to finish."

Nelton's lowered eyes flashed a shrewd look at Lewis's face.

"The exercise of discretion ennobles the profession," he said, and
stopped, a dazed, pleased look in his face at hearing his own rhyme. He
laid the table-cloth down, took from his pocket the stub of a pencil,
and wrote the words on his cuff. Then he picked up the cloth, laid it
over his arm, and opened the door. As he went out he paused and said
over his shoulder: "Master Lewis, it would hurt the governor's feelin's
if you asked him or anybody else how he got the nime of Gripes."

Let a man but feel lonely, and his mind immediately harks along the back
trail of the past. In his lonely week Lewis frequently found himself
thinking back. It was only by thinking back that he could stay in the
flat at all. Now for the first time he realized that he had been
stepping through life with seven-league boots. The future could not
possibly hold for him the tremendous distances of his past. How far he
had come since that first dim day at Consolation Cottage!

To every grown-up there is a dim day that marks the beginning of things,
the first remembered day of childhood. Lewis could not fasten on any
memory older than the memory of a rickety cab, a tall, gloomy man, and
then a white-clad group on the steps of Consolation Cottage. Black
mammy, motherly Mrs. Leighton, curly-headed Shenton, and little Natalie,
with her 'wumpled' skirt, who had stood on tiptoe to put her lips to
his, appeared before him now as part of the dawn of life.

As he looked back, he saw that the sun had risen hot on his day of life.
It had struck down Shenton, blasted the Reverend Orme, withered Ann
Leighton, and had turned plump little Natalie's body into a thin, wiry
home for hope. Natalie had always demanded joy even of little things.
Did she still de