To be sure, the “solid satisfaction” was there at the thought of having entertained them as he had long wished to be able to do, but then there had seemed a constraint which had not existed before.

The trouble was here:  he had relied on externals to please them this time, and had not exerted himself personally as he had been wont to do.  In fact Rex was not at heart as contented as he had expected to be.

To be sure, he had now all the clothes he wanted, shoes galore, and more spending money than any boy of fifteen ought to have, but all the while he was thinking that he was missing something.  And he was not exactly sure what this was.

He thought he had discovered one of the things toward the latter part of September, when the people who occupied the adjoining house to the Pells returned to town.  They were evidently a family of great wealth—­ the Harringtons.  Rex found what their name was from the servants.

There was a young man in the household—­ Dudley Harrington.  He was about twenty, and affected the sharpest crease to his trousers, the highest puffs to his neckties, carried his cane with the handle down and was altogether a dude of the latest type.

To become acquainted with this splendid youth now grew to be Reginald Pell’s one absorbing ambition.  He had always preferred to associate with boys older than himself; to be on terms of intimacy with a young man out of his teens, and who sported a mustache that was far advanced in the budding stage—­ that would be a triumph indeed.

But would he be able to accomplish his purpose?  Although he was tall for his age, Rex could not hope that the object of his admiration would look upon him as anything else than a schoolboy.  But he did not see him go out with many fellows of his own age.

He seemed to be the only child.  The parents were elderly people, and the son was a good deal by himself.

Rex saw him sometimes in his own room, his feet on the table, a cigarette between his lips, the floor around him strewn with newspapers.

“I wonder if he doesn’t ride a wheel,” he asked himself one day.  “I’ve half a mind to ask him to go out with me.  We’re neighbors.  There can’t be anything out of the way in my speaking to him.”

The school which Rex and Roy were to attend did not open till the first of October, so the boys had a good deal of time on their hands just at present Roy spent much of it at Marley visiting his friends there; Rex was thus left to his own devices.  On one of these days of Roy’s absence Rex was riding his wheel in the Park when he passed Dudley Harrington, also mounted on a silent steed.

Instinctively almost Rex half bowed.  It seemed natural to do so, when this fellow lived right next door and was so frequently in his thoughts.  He was half alarmed at his temerity, when some one rode up by his side and said: 

“Fine day for wheeling, isn’t it?”