“You are just wasting your time, Peter, over that young man,” Miss Felicia said at last, snipping the end of a thread with her scissors.  “Better buy him a guitar with a broad blue ribbon and start him off troubadouring, or, better still, put him into a suit of tin armor and give him a lance.  He doesn’t belong to this world.  It’s just as well Ruth did not hear that rigmarole.  Charming manners, I admit—­lovely, sitting on a cushion looking up into some young girl’s eyes, but he will never make his way here with those notions.  Why he should want to anger his uncle, who is certainly most kind to him, is past finding out.  He’s stupid, that’s what he is—­just stupid!”—­to break with your bread and butter and to defy those who could be of service to you being an unpardonable sin with Miss Felicia.  No, he would not do at all for Ruth.

Peter settled himself deeper in his chair and studied the cheery blaze between his outspread fingers.

“That’s the very thing will save him, Felicia.”

“What—­his manners?”

“No—­his adorable stupidity.  I grant you he’s fighting windmills, but, then, my dear, don’t forget that he’s fighting—­that’s something.”

“But they are only windmills, and, more extraordinary still, this one is grinding corn to keep him from starving,” and she folded up her sewing preparatory to leaving the room.

Peter’s fingers closed tight:  “I’m not so sure of that,” he answered gravely.

Miss Felicia had risen from her seat and was now bending over the back of his chair, her spare sharp elbows resting on its edge, her two hands clasping his cheeks.

“And are you really going to add this stupid boy to your string, you goose of a Peter?” she asked in a bantering tone, as her fingers caressed his temples.  “Don’t forget Mosenthal and little Perkins, and the waiter you brought home and fed for a week, and sent away in your best overcoat, which he pawned the next day; or the two boys at college.  Aren’t you ever going to learn?” and she leaned forward and kissed the top of his bald head.

Peter’s only reply was to reach up and smooth her jewelled fingers with his own.  He remembered them all; there was an excuse, of course, he reminded her, for his action in each and every case.  But for him Mosenthal—­really a great violinist—­would have starved, little Perkins would have been sent to the reformatory, and the waiter to the dogs.  That none of them, except the two college boys, had ever thanked him for his assistance—­a fact well known to Miss Felicia—­never once crossed his mind—­wouldn’t have made any difference if it had.

“But this young Breen is worth saving, Felicia,” he answered at last.

“From what—­the penitentiary?” she laughed—­this time with a slight note of anger in her voice.

“No, you foolish thing—­much worse.”

“From what, then?”

“From himself.”