Mrs. Gray begged him to let her care for the little fellow.  He was three years older than her Margaret, and the children grew up as brother and sister.  Mr. Brewster was generous in providing for the boy.  While he was away at college, spending money in a manner that caused the old gentleman to marvel at his own liberality, Mrs. Gray was well paid for the unused but well-kept apartments, and there never was a murmur of complaint from Edwin Peter Brewster.  He was hard, but he was not niggardly.

It had been something of a struggle for Mrs. Gray to make both ends meet.  The property in Fortieth Street was her only possession.  But little money had come to her at her husband’s death, and an unfortunate speculation of his had swept away all that had fallen to her from her father, the late Judge Merriweather.  For years she kept the old home unencumbered, teaching French and English until Margaret was well in her teens.  The girl was sent to one of the good old boarding-schools on the Hudson and came out well prepared to help her mother in the battle to keep the wolf down and appearances up.  Margaret was rich in friendships; and pride alone stood between her and the advantages they offered.  Good-looking, bright, and cheerful, she knew no natural privations.  With a heart as light and joyous as a May morning, she faced adversity as though it was a pleasure, and no one would have suspected that even for a moment her courage wavered.

Now that Brewster had come into his splendid fortune he could conceive no greater delight than to share it with them.  To walk into the little drawing-room and serenely lay large sums before them as their own seemed such a natural proceeding that he refused to see an obstacle.  But he knew it was there; the proffer of such a gift to Mrs. Gray would mean a wound to the pride inherited from haughty generations of men sufficient unto themselves.  There was a small but troublesome mortgage on the house, a matter of two or three thousand dollars, and Brewster tried to evolve a plan by which he could assume the burden without giving deep and lasting offense.  A hundred wild designs had come to him, but they were quickly relegated to the growing heap of subterfuges and pretexts condemned by his tenderness for the pride of these two women who meant so much to him.

Leaving the bank, he hastened, by electric car, to Fortieth Street and Broadway, and then walked eagerly off into the street of the numeral.  He had not yet come to the point where he felt like scorning the cars, even though a roll of banknotes was tucked snugly away in a pocket that seemed to swell with sudden affluence.  Old Hendrick, faithful servitor through two generations, was sweeping the autumn leaves from the sidewalk when Montgomery came up to the house.

“Hello, Hendrick,” was the young man’s cheery greeting.  “Nice lot of leaves you have there.”

“So?” ebbed from Hendrick, who did not even so much as look up from his work.  Hendrick was a human clam.