I saw him look at Peter in that hat and no collar, and wilt.  It was too much.  Such a friend—­such friends (for on Peter’s advice I was looking as ill as I might, an easy matter)!  No, he couldn’t come.  He was waiting for some friends.  We must excuse him.

But Peter was not to be so easily shaken off.  He launched into the most brisk and serious conversation.  He began his badger game by asking about some work upon which Dick had been engaged before he left the office, some order, how he was getting along with it, when it would be done; and, when Dick evaded and then attempted to dismiss the subject, took up another and began to expatiate on it, some work he himself was doing, something that had developed in connection with it.  He asked inane questions, complimented Dick on his looks, began to tease him about some girl.  And poor Dick—­his nervousness, his despair almost, the sense of the waning of his opportunity!  It was cruel.  He was becoming more and more restless, looking about more and more wearily and anxiously and wishing to go or for us to go.  He was horribly unhappy.  Finally, after ten or fifteen minutes had gone and various girls had crossed the plaza in various directions, as well as carriages and saddle-horses—­each one carrying his heiress, no doubt!—­he seemed to summon all his courage and did his best to dispose of us.  “You two’ll have to excuse me,” he exclaimed almost wildly.  “I can’t wait.”  Those golden moments!  She could not approach!  “My people aren’t coming, I guess.  I’ll have to be going on.”

He smiled weakly and made off, Peter half following and urging him to come back.  Then, since he would not, we stood there on the exact spot of the rendezvous gazing smirkily after him.  Then we went into the park a few paces and sat on a bench in full view, talking—­or Peter was—­most volubly.  He was really choking with laughter.  A little later, at seven-thirty, we went cackling into the park, only to return in five minutes as though we had changed our minds and were coming out—­and saw Dick bustling off at our approach.  It was sad really.  There was an element of the tragic in it.  But not to Peter.  He was all laughter, all but apoplectic gayety.  “Oh, by George!” he choked.  “This is too much!  Oh, ho!  This is great! his poor heiress!  And he came back!  Har!  Har!  Har!”

“Peter, you dog,” I said, “aren’t you ashamed of yourself, to rub it in this way?”

“Not a bit, not a bit!” he insisted most enthusiastically.  “Do him good.  Why shouldn’t he suffer?  He’ll get over it.  He’s always bluffing about his heiresses.  Now he’s lost a real one.  Har!  Har!  Har!” and he fairly choked, and for days and weeks and months he laughed, but he never told.  He merely chortled at his desk, and if any one asked him what he was laughing about, even Dick, he would reply, “Oh, something—­a joke I played on a fellow once.”

If Dick ever guessed he never indicated as much.  But that lost romance!  That faded dream!