“Luck!” exclaimed Dorothy.

“Yes, luck!” said Lispenard.  “Look at it.  He starts in like all the rest of us.  And Miss Luck calls him in to look at a sick kitten die.  Very ordinary occurrence that!  Health-board report several hundred every week.  But Miss Luck knew what she was about and called him in to just the right kind of a kitten to make a big speech about.  Thereupon he makes it, blackguarding and wiping the floor up with a millionaire brewer.  Does the brewer wait for his turn to get even with him?  Not a bit.  Miss Luck takes a hand in and the brewer falls on Peter’s breast-bone, and loves him ever afterwards.  My cousin writes him, and he snubs her.  Does she annihilate him as she would have other men?  No.  Miss Luck has arranged all that, and they become the best of friends.”

“Lispenard—­” Miss De Voe started to interrupt indignantly, but Lispenard continued, “Hold on till I finish.  One at a time.  Well.  Miss Luck gets him chosen to a convention by a fluke and Peter votes against Costell’s wishes.  What happens?  Costell promptly takes him up and pushes him for all he’s worth.  He snubs society, and society concludes that a man who is more snubby and exclusive than itself must be a man to cultivate.  He refuses to talk, and every one promptly says:  ’How interesting he is!’ He gets in the way of a dynamite bomb.  Does it kill him?  Certainly not.  Miss Luck has put an old fool there, to protect him.  He swears a bad word.  Does it shock respectable people?  No!  Every one breathes easier, and likes him the better.  He enrages and shoots the strikers.  Does he lose votes?  Not one.  Miss Luck arranges that the directors shall yield things which they had sworn not to yield; and the strikers are reconciled and print a card in praise of him.  He runs for office.  Do the other parties make a good fight of it?  No.  They promptly nominate a scoundrelly demagogue and a nonentity who thinks votes are won by going about in shirtsleeves.  So he is elected by the biggest plurality the State has ever given.  Has Miss Luck done enough?  No.  She at once sets every one predicting that he’ll get the presidential nomination two years from now, if he cares for it.  Be it friend or enemy, intentional or unintentional, every one with whom he comes in contact gives him a boost.  While look at me!  There isn’t a soul who ever gave me help.  It’s been pure, fire-with-your-eyes-shut luck.

“Was this morning luck too?” asked a bridesmaid.

“Absolutely,” sighed Lispenard.  “And what luck!  I always said that Peter would never marry, because he would insist on taking women seriously, and because at heart he was afraid of them to a woeful degree, and showed it in such a way, as simply to make women think he didn’t like them individually.  But Miss Luck wouldn’t allow that.  Oh, no!  Miss Luck isn’t content even that Peter shall take his chance of getting a wife, with the rest of us.  She’s not going to have any accidents