“Please don’t, Mr. Grayson,” interrupted Jack.  The boy had begun to see through the raillery now.  “I will do anything you want me to do.”

Peter burst into a laugh and grabbed him by both shoulders:  “Of course, my dear boy, you will do anything except what you believe to be wrong.  That’s right—­right as can be; nobody wants you to do any different, and—­”

The opening of a door leading into the hall caused Peter to stop in his harangue and turn his head.  Mrs. McGuffey was ushering in a young woman whose radiant face was like a burst of sunshine.  Peter strained his eyes and then sprang forward: 

“Why, Ruth!”

There was no doubt about it!  That young woman, her cheeks like two June peonies, her eyes dancing, the daintiest and prettiest hat in the world on her head, was already half across the room and close to Peter’s rug before Jack could even realize that he and she were breathing the same air.

“Oh!  I just could not wait a minute longer!” she cried in a joyous tone.  “I had such a good time yesterday, dear aunt Felicia, and—­ Why!—­it is you, Mr. Breen, and have you come to tell aunty the same thing?  Wasn’t it lovely?”

Then Jack said that it was lovely, and that he hadn’t come for any such purpose—­then that he had—­and then Peter patted her hand and told her she was the prettiest thing he had ever seen in all his life, and that he was going to throw overboard all his other sweethearts at once and cleave to her alone; and Miss Felicia vowed that she was the life of the party; and Jack devoured her with his eyes, his heart thumping away at high pressure; and so the moments fled until the blithesome young girl, saying she had not a minute to spare, as she had to meet her father, who would not wait, readjusted her wraps, kissed Miss Felicia on both cheeks, sent another flying through the air toward Peter from the tips of her fingers, and with Jack as escort—­he also had to see a friend who would not wait a minute—­danced out of the room and so on down to the street.

The Scribe will not follow them very far in their walk uptown.  Both were very happy, Jack because the scandal he had been dreading, since he had last looked into her eyes, had escaped her ears, and Ruth because of all the young men she had met in her brief sojourn in New York this young Mr. Breen treated her with most consideration.

While the two were making their way through the crowded streets, Jack helping her over the crossings, picking out the drier spots for her dainty feet to step upon, shielding her from the polluting touch of the passing throng, Miss Felicia had resumed her sewing —­it was a bit of lace that needed a stitch here and there—­and Peter, dragging a chair before the fire, had thrown himself into its depths, his long, thin white fingers open fan-like to its blaze.