Jack’s face cleared.  “No, she is lovely, and sent you her dearest love.”

“Then it’s your work up in the valley?”

“No—­we begin in a month.  Everything’s ready—­or will be.”

“Oh!  I see, it’s the loss of Minott.  Oh, yes, I understand it all now.  Forgive me, Jack.  I did not remember how intimate you and he were once.  Yes, it is a dreadful thing to lose a friend.  Poor boy!”

“No—­it’s not that altogether, Uncle Peter.”

He could not tell him.  The dear old gentleman was ignorant of everything regarding Garry and his affairs, except that he was a brilliant young architect, with a dashing way about him, of whom Morris was proud.  This image he could not and would not destroy.  And yet something must be done to switch Peter from the main subject—­at least until Cohen should leave.

“The fact is I have just had an interview with Uncle Arthur, and he has rather hurt my feelings,” Jack continued in explanation, a forced smile on his face.  “I wanted to borrow a little money.  All I had to offer as security was my word.”

Peter immediately became interested.  Nothing delighted him so much as to talk over Jack’s affairs.  Was he not a silent partner in the concern?

“You wanted it, of course, to help out on the new work,” he rejoined.  “Yes, it always takes money in the beginning.  And what did the old fox say?”

Jack smiled meaningly.  “He said that what I called ‘my word’ wasn’t a collateral.  Wanted something better.  So I’ve got to hunt for it somewhere else.”

“And he wouldn’t give it to you?” cried Peter indignantly.  “No, of course not!  A man’s word doesn’t count with these pickers and stealers.  Half—­three-quarters—­of the business of the globe is done on a man’s word.  He writes it on the bottom or on the back of a slip of paper small enough to light a cigar with—­but it’s only his word that counts.  In these mouse-traps, however, these cracks in the wall, they want something they can get rid of the moment somebody else says it is not worth what they loaned on it; or they want a bond with the Government behind it.  Oh, I know them!”

Cohen laughed—­a dry laugh—­in compliment to Peter’s way of putting it—­but there was no ring of humor in it.  He had been reading Jack’s mind.  There was something behind the forced smile that Peter had missed—­something deeper than the lines of anxiety and the haunted look in the eyes.  This was a different lad from the one with whom he had spent so pleasant an evening some weeks before.  What had caused the change?

“Don’t you abuse them, Mr. Grayson—­these pawn-brokers,” he said in his slow, measured way.  “If every man was a Turk we could take his word, but when they are Jews and Christians and such other unreliable people, of course they want something for their ducats.  It’s the same old pound of flesh.  Very respectable firm this, Mr. Arthur Breen & Co.—­Very respectable people.  I used to press off the elder gentleman’s coat—­he had only two—­one of them I made myself when he first came to New York—­but he has forgotten all about it now,” and the little tailor purred softly.