The architect grabbed Peter by the arm.  “When did that mighty idea crack its way through that shell of yours, you tottering Methusaleh!  Old!  You’re spryer than a frolicking lamb in March.  You are coining, too, Major.  Get into your coats and things!”

“But Isaac is pressing my swallow-tail.”

“I don’t mean your dress-coat, man—­your overcoat!  Now I am sure you didn’t read my letter?  Some of my young fellows haven’t got such a thing—­too poor.”

“But look at yours!”

“Yes, I had to slip into mine out of respect to the occasion; my boys wouldn’t like it if I didn’t.  Sort of uniform to them, but they’d be mighty uncomfortable if you wore yours.  Hurry up, we haven’t a minute to lose.”

Peter had forced the architect into one of the big chairs by the fire by this time, and stood bending over him, his hands resting on Morris’s broad shoulders.

“Take the Major with you, that’s a good fellow, and let me drop in about eleven o’clock,” he pleaded, an expression on his face seen only when two men understand and love each other.  “There’s a letter from Felicia to attend to; she writes she is coming down for a couple of weeks, and then I’ve really had a devil of a day at the bank.”

“No, you old fraud, you can’t wheedle me that way.  I want you before everybody sits down, so my young chaps can look you over.  Why, Peter, you’re better than a whole course of lectures, and you mean something, you beggar!  I tell you” (here he lifted himself from the depths of the chair and scrambled to his feet) “you’ve got to go if I have to tie your hands and feet and carry you downstairs on my back!  And you, too, Major—­both of you.  Here’s your overcoat—­into it, you humbug! ... the other arm.  Is this your hat?  Out you go!” and before I had stopped laughing—­I had refused to crowd the cab—­Morris had buttoned the surtout over Peter’s breast, crammed the straight-brimmed hat over his eyes, and the two were clattering downstairs.

CHAPTER III

Long before the two had reached the top floor of the building in which the dinner was to be given, they had caught the hum of the merrymakers, the sound bringing a smile of satisfaction to Peter’s face, but it was when he entered the richly colored room itself, hazy with cigarette smoke, and began to look into the faces of the guests grouped about him and down the long table illumined by myriads of wax candles that all his doubts and misgivings faded into thin air.  Never since his school days, he told me afterwards, had he seen so many boisterously happy young fellows grouped together.  And not only young fellows, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes, but older men with thoughtful faces, who had relinquished for a day the charge of some one of the important buildings designed in the distinguished architect’s office, and had spent the night on the train that they might do honor to their Chief.