And Garry!

Not many years have elapsed since I watched him running in and out of his father’s spacious drawing-rooms on Fourteenth Street—­the court end of town in those days.  In the days, I mean, when his father was Collector of the Port, and his father’s house with its high ceilings, mahogany doors and wide hall, and the great dining-room overlooking a garden with a stable in the rear.  It had not been many years, I say, since the Hon. Creighton Minott had thrown wide its doors to whoever came—­that is, whoever came properly accredited.  It didn’t last long, of course.  Politics changed; the “ins” became the “outs.”  And with the change came the bridging-over period—­the kind of cantilever which hope thrusts out from one side of the bank of the swift-flowing stream of adversity in the belief that somebody on the other side of the chasm will build the other half, and the two form a highway leading to a change of scene and renewed prosperity.

The hospitable Collector continued to be hospitable.  He had always taken chances—­he would again.  The catch-terms of Garry’s day, such as “couldn’t fool him,” “keep your eye peeled,” “a buzz-saw,” etc., etc., were not current in the father’s day, but their synonyms were.  He knew what he was about.  As soon as a particular member of the Board got back from the other side the Honorable Collector would have the position of Treasurer, and then it was only a question of time when he would be President of the new corporation.  I can see now the smile that lighted up his rather handsome face when he told me.  He was “monkeying with a buzz-saw” all the same if he did but know it, and yet he always professed to follow the metaphor that he could “throw off the belt” that drove the pulley at his own good pleasure and so stop the connecting machinery before the teeth of the whirling blade could reach his fingers.  Should it get beyond his control—­of which there was not the remotest possibility—­he would, of course, rent his house, sell his books and curtail.  “In the meantime, my dear fellow, there is some of the old Madeira left and a game of whist will only help to drive dull care away.”

Garry never whimpered when the crash came.  The dear mother died—­ how patient and uncomplaining she was in all their ups and downs—­ and Garry was all that was left.  What he had gained since in life he had worked for; first as office boy, then as draughtsman and then in charge of special work, earning his Chief’s approval, as the Scribe has duly set forth.  He got his inheritance, of course.  Don’t we all get ours?  Sometimes it skips a generation—­some times two—­but generally we are wearing the old gentleman’s suit of clothes cut down to fit our small bodies, making believe all the time that they are our very own, unconscious of the discerning eyes who recognize their cut and origin.