Such were the relations between the two at graduation time.  Watts, who had always prepared his lessons in a tenth part of the time it had taken Peter, buckled down in the last few weeks, and easily won an honorable mention.  Peter had tried hard to win honors, but failed.

“You did too much outside work, old man,” said Watts, who would cheerfully have given his own triumph to his friend.  “If you want success in anything, you’ve got to sacrifice other things and concentrate on the object.  The Mention’s really not worth the ink it’s written with, in my case, but I knew it would please mammy and pappy, so I put on steam, and got it.  If I’d hitched on a lot of freight cars loaded with stuff that wouldn’t have told in Exams, I never could have been in on time.”

Peter shook his head rather sadly.  “You outclass me in brains, Watts, as much as you do in other things”

“Nonsense,” said Watts.  “I haven’t one quarter of your head.  But my ancestors—­here’s to the old coves—­have been brain-culturing for three hundred years, while yours have been land-culturing; and of course my brain moves quicker and easier than yours.  I take to a book, by hereditary instinct, as a duck to water, while you are like a yacht, which needs a heap of building and fitting before she can do the same.  But you’ll beat me in the long run, as easily as the boat does the duck.  And the Honor’s nothing.”

“Except, as you said, to one’s”—­Peter hesitated for a moment, divided in mind by his wish to quote accurately, and his dislike of anything disrespectful, and then finished “to one’s mother.”

“That’s the last person it’s needed for, chum,” replied Watts.  “If there’s one person that doesn’t need the world’s or faculty’s opinion to prove one’s merit, it’s one’s dear, darling, doating, self-deluded and undisillusioned mamma.  Heigh-ho.  I’ll be with mine two weeks from now, after we’ve had our visit at the Pierces’.  I’m jolly glad you are going, old man.  It will be a sort of tapering-off time for the summer’s separation.  I don’t see why you insist on starting in at once in New York?  No one does any law business in the summertime.  Why, I even think the courts are closed.  Come, you’d better go on to Grey-Court with me, and try it, at least.  My mammy will kill the fatted calf for you in great style.”

“We’ve settled that once,” said Peter, who was evidently speaking journalistically, for he had done the settling.

Watts said something in a half-articulate way, which certainly would have fired the blood of every dime museum-keeper in the country, had they been there to hear the conversation, for, as well as could be gathered from the mumbling, it related to a “pig-headed donkey” known of to the speaker.  “I suppose you’ll be backing out of the Pierce affair yet,” he added, discontentedly.

“No,” said Peter.

“An invitation to Grey-Court is worth two of the Shrubberies.  My mother knows only the right kind of people, while Mr. Pierce—­”