Nothing of it all interested him.  His mind was on the talk at the breakfast table, especially his uncle’s ideas of hospitality, all of which had appalled and disgusted him.  With his father there had always been a welcome for every one, no matter what the position in life, the only standard being one of breeding and character—­ and certainly Peter had both.  His uncle had helped him, of course —­put him under obligations he could never repay.  Yet after all, it was proved now to him that he was but a guest in the house enjoying only such rights as any other guest might possess, and with no voice in the welcome—­a condition which would never be altered, until he became independent himself—­a possibility which at the moment was too remote to be considered.  Then his mind reverted to his conversation the night before with Mr. Grayson and with this change of thought his father’s portrait—­the one that hung in his room—­loomed up.  He had the night before turned on the lights—­to their fullest—­and had scanned the picture closely, eager to find some trace of Peter in the counterfeit presentment of the man he loved best, and whose memory was still almost a religion, but except that both Peter and his father were bald, and that both wore high, old-fashioned collars and neck-cloths, he had been compelled to admit with a sigh that there was nothing about the portrait on which to base the slightest claim to resemblance.

“Yet he’s like my father, he is, he is,” he kept repeating to himself as the cab sped on.  “I’ll find out what it is when I know him better.  To-night when Mr. Grayson comes I’ll study it out,” and a joyous smile flashed across his features as he thought of the treat in store for him.

When at last the boy reached his office, where, behind the mahogany partition with its pigeon-hole cut through the glass front he sat every day, he swung back the doors of the safe, took out his books and papers and made ready for work.  He had charge of the check book, and he alone signed the firm’s name outside of the partners.  “Rather young,” one of them protested, until he looked into the boy’s face, then he gave his consent; something better than years of experience and discretion are wanted where a scratch of a pen might mean financial ruin.

Breen had preceded him with but a nod to his clerks, and had disappeared into his private office—­another erection of ground glass and mahogany.  Here the senior member of the firm shut the door carefully, and turning his back fished up a tiny key attached to a chain leading to the rear pocket of his trousers.  With this he opened a small closet near his desk—­a mere box of a closet—­ took from it a squatty-shaped decanter labelled “Rye, 1840,” poured out half a glass, emptied it into his person with one gulp, and with the remark in a low voice to himself that he was now “copper fastened inside and out”—­removed all traces of the incident and took up his morning’s mail.