Callovan was frankly Irish.  The curly black hair of the Milesian spoke for him as clearly as the blue-gray eye.  He shaved clean and he looked clean.  An ancestry of hard workers left limbs that lifted him to almost six feet of strong manhood.  His skin was ruddy and fresh.  Two years younger than Thornton, he yet looked younger by five.  And Callovan, like Thornton, was inwardly what the outward signs promised.

Orville was tall and straight.  The ghost of a black mustache was on his lip.  His hair was scanty, and was parted carefully.  His dress showed taste, but not fastidiousness.  He was handsome, well groomed and particular, without obtrusiveness in any one of the points.  He was just a little taller than Callovan; but he was grayer and a great deal more thoughtful.  He was a hard book to read, even for an intimate; but the print was large, if the text was puzzling.  He looked to be “in” the world, but who could say if he were “of” it?

All three of these friends were very rich.  Thornton had made his money within five years—­a lucky mining strike, a quick sale, a move to the city, speculation, politics were mixed up in a sort of rapid-fire story that the other friends never cared to hear the details of.  Callovan inherited his wealth from his hard-fisted old father, who had died but a year before.  Orville was the richest of the three.  He had always been rich.  His father had died a month before he was born.  His mother paid for her only child with her life.  Orville’s guardian had, as soon as possible, placed him in St. Wilbur’s Preparatory School and then in the College; but he was a careful and wise man, this guardian, so, though plenty of money was allowed him, yet the college authorities had charge of it.  They doled it out to the growing boy and youth in amounts that could neither spoil nor starve him.  It was good for Orville that the guardian had been thus wise and the college authorities thus prudent.  He himself was generous and kind-hearted; by nature a spendthrift, but by training just a bit of a miser.  He had learned a little about values during these school and college days.

“Your car is not here yet, Mr. Orville,” said the doorman, when the three moved to leave the club.

“Very unlike your careful Michael,” remarked Callovan.

Orville came at once to the defense of his exemplary chauffeur.  “I gave him permission to go to St. Mary’s to-night for confession,” he said.  “Michael will be here in a moment.  He goes to confession every Saturday night and is a weekly communicant.  I can stand a little tardiness once a week for the sake of having a man like Michael around.”

“Good boy is Michael,” put in Thornton.  “I wish I could get just a small dose of his piety.  Candidly, I am awfully lonesome sometimes without a little of it.

A page came running up.  “Telephone for you, Mr. Orville,” he said; and at almost the same moment the doorman called out:  “Your car is here now, sir.”  Orville went to the telephone booth, but returned in a moment.