and the three powerful sons who were building a reputation for the firm of John St. John & Brothers, lawyers in Portland.  He gave Aladdin leave to come and go, even smiled grimly as he did so, and, except at those moments when he met him face to face, forgot that Aladdin existed.  Margaret enjoyed Aladdin hugely, and unconsciously sat for the heroine of every novel he began, and the inspiration of every verse that he wrote.  When Aladdin reached his eighteenth year and Margaret her sixteenth there was such a delightful and strong friendship between them that the other young people of the town talked.  Margaret in her heart of hearts was fonder of Aladdin than of anybody else—­when she was with him, or under the immediate influence of having been with him, for nobody else had such extraordinary ideas, or such a fund of amusing vitality, or such fascinating moods.  Like every one with a touch of the Celt in him, Aladdin was by turns gloomiest and most unfortunate of all mortals upon whom the sun positively would not shine, or the gayest of the gay.  From his droll manner of singing a song, to the seriousness with which he sometimes bore all the sufferings of all the world, he seemed to her a most complex and unusual individual.  But his spells were of the instant, and her thoughts were very often on that beautiful young man, Manners, who, having completed his course at the law school, was coming to spend a month before he should begin to practise.  Since his first visit years ago, Manners, now a grown man of twenty, had spent much of many of his vacations with the St. Johns.  The senator was obliged, as well as his limitations would allow, to take the place of a mother to Margaret, and though it was barely guessable from his words or actions, he loved Peter Manners like a son, and had resolved, almost since the beginning, to end by having him for one.  And the last time that Manners had visited them in Washington, St. John had seen to it that he shook hands with all the great men who were making history.  Once the senator and Margaret had visited the Manners in New York.  That had been a bitter time for Aladdin, for while all the others of his age were sniffing timidly at love and life, he had found his grand passion early and stuck to it, and was now blissful with hope and now acrid with jealousy.  Peter Manners he hated with a green and jealous hatred.  And if Peter Manners had any of the baser passions, he divined this, and hated Aladdin back, but rather contemptuously.  They met occasionally, and the meetings, always in the presence of Margaret, were never very happy.  She was woman enough to rejoice at being a bone of contention, and angel enough to hate seeing good times spoiled.