“Peter?  I’ve not seen him for months.  But I don’t see why you call him a mutt!”

“Say, did you ever know that he made a pretty good thing out of Mrs. Carroll’s window washer?” Billy asked confidentally, leaning toward her in the dark.

“He paid her five hundred dollars for it!” Susan flashed back.  “Did you know that?”

“Sure I knew that,” Billy said.

“Well—­well, did he make more than that?” Susan asked.

“He sold it to the Wakefield Hardware people for twenty-five thousand dollars,” Billy announced.

“For what!”

“For twenty-five thousand,” he repeated.  “They’re going to put them into lots of new apartments.  The National Duplex, they call it.  Yep, it’s a big thing, I guess.”

“Bill, you mean twenty-five hundred!”

“Twenty-five thousand, I tell you!  It was in the ’Scientific American,’ I can show it to you!”

Susan kept a moment’s shocked silence.

“Billy, I don’t believe he would do that!” she said at last.

“Oh, shucks,” Billy said good-naturedly, “it was rotten, but it wasn’t as bad as that!  It was legal enough.  She was pleased with her five hundred, and I suppose he told himself that, but for him, she mightn’t have had that!  Probably he meant to give her a fat check—–.”

“Give her?  Why, it was hers!” Susan burst out.  “What did Peter Coleman have to do with it, anyway!”

“Well, that’s the way all big fortunes are built up,” Billy said.  “You happen to see this, though, and that’s why it seems so rotten!”

“I’ll never speak to Peter Coleman again!” Susan declared, outraged.

“You’ll have to cut out a good many of your friends in the Saunders set if you want to be consistent,” Billy said.  “This doesn’t seem to me half as bad as some others!  What I think is rotten is keeping hundreds of acres of land idle, for years and years, or shutting poor little restless kids up in factories, or paying factory girls less than they can live on, and drawing rent from the houses where they are ruined, body and soul!  The other day some of our men were discharged because of bad times, and as they walked out they passed Carpenter’s eighteen-year-old daughter sitting in the motor, with a chauffeur in livery in front, and with her six-hundred-dollar Pekingese sprawling in her lap, in his little gold collar.  Society’s built right on that sort of thing, Sue! you’d be pretty surprised if you could see a map of the bad-house district, with the owners’ names attached.”

“They can’t be held responsible for the people who rent their property!” Susan protested.

“Bocqueraz told me that night that in New York you’ll see nice-looking maids, nice-looking chauffeurs, and magnificent cars, any afternoon, airing the dogs in the park,” said Billy.

The name silenced Susan; she felt her breath come short.

“He was a dandy fellow,” mused Billy, not noticing.  “Didn’t you like him?”