“Is to be our host,” interrupted Peter, but with no shade of correction in his voice.

“Yes,” laughed Watts, “and he is a host.  He’ll not let any one else get a word in edgewise.  You are just the kind of talker he’ll like.  Mark my word, he’ll be telling every one, before you’ve been two hours in the house, that you are a remarkably brilliant conversationalist.”

“What will he say of you?” said Peter, in a sentence which he broke up into reasonable lengths by a couple of pulls at his pipe in the middle of it.

“Mr. Pierce, chum,” replied Watts, with a look in his eyes which Peter had learned to associate with mischief on Watts’s part, “has too great an affection for yours truly to object to anything I do.  Do you suppose, if I hadn’t been sure of my footing at the Shrubberies, that I should have dared to ask an invitation for”—­then Watts hesitated for a moment, seeing a half-surprised, half-anxious look come into Peter’s face, “for myself?” he continued.

“Tell truth and shame the devil,” said Peter.

Watts laughed.  “Confound you!  That’s what comes of letting even such a stupid old beggar as you learn to read one’s thoughts.  It’s mighty ungrateful of you to use them against me.  Yes.  I did ask to have you included in the party.  But you needn’t put your back up, Mr. Unbendable, and think you were forced on them.  Mr. Pierce gave me carte blanche, and if it hadn’t been you, it would have been some other donkey.”

“But Mrs. Pierce?” queried Peter.

“Oh,” explained Watts, “of course Mrs. Pierce wrote the letter.  I couldn’t do it in my name, and so Mr. Pierce told her to do it.  They’re very land of me, old man, because my governor is the largest stockholder, and a director in Mr. P.’s bank, and I was told I could bring down some fellows next week for a few days’ jollity.  I didn’t care to do that, but of course I wouldn’t have omitted you for any amount of ducats.”

Which explanation solves the mystery of Peter’s presence at the Shrubberies.  To understand his face we must trace the period between his arrival and the moment this story begins.

CHAPTER IV.

Beginnings.

How far Watts was confining himself to facts in the foregoing dialogue is of no concern, for the only point of value was that Peter was invited, without regard to whether Watts first asked Mr. Pierce, or Mr. Pierce first asked Watts.  A letter which the latter wrote to Miss Pierce, as soon as it was settled that Peter should go, is of more importance, and deserves quotation in full: 

    June 7th.

    My dear Helen—­