The tailor, the haberdasher and the bootmaker came, saw and measured, while Jack sat in the background, with a sheaf of plates of men’s clothing in his lap, and gave directions.  Jerry must have felt a great deal like a fool during the operation for I’m sure he looked one.  But Ballard had his way and not until night did he leave us to peace and our own devices.

The time for the boy’s emergence approached, alas, too quickly.  A change had come over the spirit of Jerry’s dreams.  I saw that he was eager to go.  It seemed that he already stood on tiptoe peering forth, eager, straining at his leash.  And since he was no longer content at Horsham Manor, I reasoned, with regret, that the sooner he went the better.  I had done all I could for him.  His destiny was now in the lap of the gods.

Everything had been carefully arranged.  The Ballards, elder and younger, were to take him to the new house in town where Christopher would look after him.  At first Jerry would not listen to the arrangement.  I had for so long been his guide and philosopher I must continue his friend.  He wanted me with him in New York.  But to this I demurred.  Much as I disliked the thought of separation, I had made up my mind that he must go alone, cut adrift from all moral support.  I had wished to go away, for having saved practically all my salary for ten years I was now independent, but at Jerry’s insistent pleading we compromised.  For the present I would stay on at the Manor and finish my book.

Jerry’s birthday dinner was an impressive affair.  With the two Ballards came the five solemn co-executors of John Benham’s will—­Mr. Stewardson, Mr. da Costa, Mr. Wrenn, Mr. Walsenberg and Mr. Duhring.  And these, with Jerry, Radford, Flynn, the boxer, and myself made up the company.  Jerry had insisted on having Flynn and no amount of urging could dissuade him.  Flynn was his friend, he said, more his friend than Mr. Wrenn, Mr. Duhring or indeed any of the others whom he barely knew by sight.  And so Flynn came.

The elders were solemn and significant, Jerry, at the head of the table, wearing for the first time his new finery (under the hypnotism, as he confessed in a whisper, of the vast expanse of white shirt-front), trying to look as though he were enjoying himself.  Radford and I were mere onlookers.  Flynn was acutely miserable.  Had it not been for Jack Ballard I fear the conversation would have degenerated into a discussion of the merits and possibilities of Jerry’s many “companies.”  But every time that that danger threatened the irrepressible Jack demolished it with an anecdote.  He wasn’t going to have Jerry’s bud nipped so early, as his own had been, by the frost of finance.  By the time we had reached the roast, and the champagne, the plutocrats seemed to realize that the occasion was a birthday party and not a board meeting.

Over the port there were speeches, toasts by the plutocrats, one by one, to the newly risen Railroad King, while Jerry grasped the arms of his chair, a ballet dancer’s smile on his lips, trying to look happy.  But when Jack got up he laughed genuinely.