The distinguished architect understood it all a week later when the new uptown synagogue was being talked of and he was invited to meet the board, and found to his astonishment that the wise little man with the big gold spectacles, occupying the chair was none other than Peter’s tailor.

“Our mutual friend Mr. Grayson, of the Exeter Bank, spoke to me about you, Mr. Morris,” said the little man without a trace of foreign accent and with all the composure of a great banker making a government loan; rising at the same time, with great dignity introducing Morris to his brother trustees and then placing him in the empty seat next his own.  After that, and on more than one occasion, there were three chairs around Peter’s blaze, with Morris in one of them.

All these thoughts coursed through Peter’s head as Jack and Cohen were mounting the three flights of stairs.

“Ah, Isaac,” he cried at first sight of his friend, “I just wanted you to know my boy, Jack Breen, better, and as his legs are younger than mine, I sent him down instead of going myself—­you don’t mind, do you?”

“Mind!—­of course I do not mind,—­but I do know Mr. Breen.  I first met him many months ago—­when your sister was here—­and then I see him going in and out all the time—­and—­”

“Stop your nonsense, Isaac;—­that’s not the way to know a man; that’s the way not to know him, but what’s more to the point is, I want Jack to know you.  These young fellows have very peculiar ideas about a good many things,—­and this boy is like all the rest—­some of which ought to be knocked out of his head,—­your race, for one thing.  He thinks that because you are a Jew that you—­”

Jack uttered a smothered, “Oh, Uncle Peter!” but the old fellow who now had the tailor in one of his big chairs and was filling a thin wineglass with a brown liquid (ten years in the wood)—­Holker sent it—­kept straight on.  “Jack’s all right inside, or I wouldn’t love him, but there are a good many things he has got to learn, and you happen to be one of them.”

Cohen lay back in his chair and laughed heartily.

“Do not mind him, Mr. Breen,—­do not mind a word he says.  He mortifies me that same way.  And now—­” here he turned his head to Peter—­“what does he think of my race?”

“Oh!  He thinks you are a lot of money-getters and pawnbrokers, gouging the poor and squeezing the rich.”

Jack broke out into a cold perspiration:  “Really, Uncle Peter!  Now, Mr. Cohen, won’t you please believe that I never said one word of it,” exclaimed Jack in pleading tones, his face expressing his embarrassment.

“I never said you did, Jack,” rejoined Peter with mock solemnity in his voice.  “I said you thought so.  And now here he is,—­look at him.  Does he look like Scrooge or Shylock or some old skinflint who—­” here he faced Cohen, his eyes brimming with merriment—­ “What are we going to do with this blasphemer, Isaac?  Shall we boil him in oil as they did that old sixteenth-century saint you were telling me about the other night, or shall we—?”