“I have decided never to take a case which has not right on its side.”

“A lawyer is just as much bound to try a case as a physician is bound to take a patient.”

“That is what lawyers say outside, but they know better.”

“Well, have your scruples.  We’ll make the firm cases only such as you choose.  I’ll manage the others.”

“I should like to,” said Peter.  “I’m very grateful for the offer—­but we could hardly do that successfully.  If the firm was good for anything, we should be known as belonging to it, and the public could not well discriminate.”

So that chance of success was passed.  But every now and then Bohlmann sent him something to do, and Dummer helped him to a joint case occasionally.

So, though friends grew steadily in numbers, society saw less and less of Peter.  Those who cared to study his tastes came to recognize that to force formal entertaining on him was no kindness, and left it to Peter to drop in when he chose, making him welcome when he came.

He was pleased to get a letter from Lispenard during the winter, from Japan.  It was long, but only the first paragraph need be quoted, for the rest related merely to his travels: 

“The breezes of the Pacific have blown away all my bad temper,” he wrote, “and I want to say that I was wrong, and regret my original fault, as well as what it later led me into.  You are quite right.  We must continue friends.”

Peter wrote a reply, which led to a regular correspondence.  He sent Miss De Voe, also, a line of Christmas greetings, and received a long letter from her at Nice, which told him something of Watts and Helen: 

“She is now well again, but having been six years in Europe, she and her husband have become wedded to the life.  I question if they ever return.  I spoke of you, and they both inquired with great warmth about you.”

Peter replied, sending his “remembrance to Mr. and Mrs. D’Alloi in case you again meet them.”  From that time on Miss De Voe and he corresponded, she telling him of her Italian, Greek and Egyptian wanderings, and he writing of his doings, especially in regard to a certain savings bank fund standing in the name of “Peter Stirling, trustee” to which Miss De Voe had, the winter before, arranged to contribute a thousand dollars yearly.

As his practice increased he began to indulge himself a little.  Through the instrumentality of Mr. Pell, he was put first into one and later into a second of the New York clubs, and his dinners became far less simple in consequence.  He used these comforters of men, indeed, almost wholly for dining, and, though by no means a club-man in other senses, it was still a tendency to the luxurious.  To counteract this danger he asked Mr. Costell to pick him up a saddle-horse, whereupon that friend promptly presented him with one.  He went regularly now to a good tailor, which conduct ought to have ruined him with the “b’ys,” but it didn’t.  He still smoked a pipe occasionally in the saloons or on the doorsteps of the district, yet candor compels us to add that he now had in his room a box of cigars labelled “Habana.”  These were creature pleasures, however, which he only allowed himself on rare occasions.  And most of these luxuries did not appear till his practice had broadened beyond the point already noted.