A faint sound attracted Peter’s attention.  He looked out at his open window and saw old Rose making off the back way with something concealed under her petticoat.  Peter knew it was the unused ham and biscuits that she had cooked.  For once the old negress hurried along without railing at the world.  She moved with a silent, but, in a way, self-respecting, flight.  Peter could see by the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders that not only did her spoil gratify her enmity to mankind in general and the Captain in particular, but she was well within her rights in her acquisition.  She disappeared around a syringa bush, and was heard no more until she reappeared to cook the noon meal, as vitriolic as ever.

* * * * *

When Peter entered the library, old Captain Renfrew greeted him with morning wishes, thus sustaining the fiction that they had not seen each other before, that morning.

The old gentleman seemed pleased but somewhat excited over his new secretary.  He moved some of his books aimlessly from one table to another, placed them in exact piles as if he were just about to plunge into heroic labor, and could not give time to such details once he had begun.

As he arranged his books just so, he cleared his throat.

“Now, Peter, we want to get down to this,” he announced dynamically; “do this thing, shove this work out!” He started with tottery briskness around to his manuscript drawer, but veered off to the left to aline some magazines.  “System, Peter, system.  Without system one may well be hopeless of performing any great literary labor; but with system, the constant piling up of brick on brick, stone on stone—­it’s the way Rome was built, my boy.”

Peter made a murmur supposed to acknowledge the correctness of this view.

Eventually the old Captain drew out his drawer of manuscript, stood fumbling with it uncertainly.  Now and then he glanced at Peter, a genuine secretary who stood ready to help him in his undertaking.  The old gentleman picked up some sheets of his manuscript, seemed about to read them aloud, but after a moment shook his head, and said, “No, we’ll do that to-night,” and restored them to their places.  Finally he turned to his helper.

“Now, Peter,” he explained, “in doing this work, I always write at night.  It’s quieter then,—­less distraction.  My mornings I spend downtown in conversation with my friends.  If you should need me, Peter, you can walk down and find me in front of the livery-stable.  I sit there for a while each morning.”

The gravity with which he gave this schedule of his personal habits amused Peter, who bowed with a serious, “Very well, Captain.”

“And in the meantime,” pursued the old man, looking vaguely about the room, “you will do well to familiarize yourself with my library in order that you may be properly qualified for your secretarial labors.”

Peter agreed again.