As they talked desultorily a group of khaki clad youngsters filed past, Philip Lambert among them, looking only an older and taller boy in their midst.  The lads looked happy, alert, vigorous, were of clean, upstanding type, the pick of the town it seemed probable to Harrison Cressy who said as much to his companion.

The other smiled and shook his head.

“You are mistaken, sir,” he said.  “Three months ago most of those fellows were riffraff—­the kind that hang around street corners smoking and indulging in loose talk and profanity.  Young Lambert, the chap with them, their Scout-master, picked that kind from choice, turned down a respectable church-mothered bunch for this one, left the other for a man who wanted an easier row to hoe.  It was some stunt, as the boys say.  It took a man like Phil Lambert to put it through.  He has the crowd where he wants them now though.  They would go through fire and water if he led them and he is a born leader.”

Harrison Cressy’s eyes followed the departing group.  Here was a new light on his hoped-for son-in-law.  So he picked “publicans-and sinners” to eat with.  Mr. Cressy rather liked that.  He hated snobs and pharisees, couldn’t stomach either brand.

“It means a good deal to a town like this when its college-bred boys come back and lend a hand like that,” the other man went on.  “So many of them rush off to the cities thinking there isn’t scope enough for their ineffable wisdom and surpassing talents in their own home town.  A number of people prophesied that young Lambert would do the same instead of settling down with his father as we all wanted him to do.  I wasn’t much afraid of that myself.  Phil has sense enough to see rather straight usually.  He did about that.  And then the kickers put up a howl that he had a swelled head, felt above the rest of Dunbury because he had a college education and his father was getting to be one of the most prosperous men in town.  They complained he wouldn’t go in for things the rest of the town was interested in, kept to himself when he was out of the store.  There were some grounds for the kick I will admit.  But it wasn’t a month before he got his bearings, had his head out of the clouds and was in the thick of everything.  They swear by him now almost as much as they do by his father which is saying a good deal for Dunbury has revolved about Stuart Lambert for years.  It is beginning to revolve about Stuart Lambert and Son now.  But I am boring you with all this.  Phil happens to be rather a favorite of mine.”

“You know him well?” questioned Mr. Cressy.

“I ought to.  I am Robert Caldwell, principal of the High School here.  I’ve known Phil since he was in knickerbockers and had him under my direct eye for four years.  He kept my eye sufficiently busy at that,” he added with a smile.  “There wasn’t much mischief that youngster and a neighbor of his, young Ted Holiday, didn’t get into.  Maybe that is why he is such a success with the black sheep,” he added with a nod in the direction in which the khaki-clad lads had gone.