That the memories of Masie’s birthday party should have been revived again and again, and that the several incidents should have been discussed for days thereafter —­every eye growing the brighter in the telling—­ was to have been expected.  Kitty could talk of nothing else.  The beauty of the room; the charm of Masie’s costume; Kling’s generosity; and last, O’Day’s bearing and appearance as he led the child through the stately dance, looking, as Kitty expressed it, “that fine and handsome you would have thought he was a lord mayor,” were now her daily topics of conversation.

Masie was equally enthusiastic, rushing down-stairs the next morning to throw her arms around his neck with an “Oh, Uncle Felix, I never, never, never was so happy in all my life!”

Kling was still more jubilant.  The success of Masie’s banquet room had established him at once among bric-a-brac dealers as a competitor quite out of the ordinary.  His old customers came in flocks, walking about with gasps of astonishment.  Before the week was out, a masonic lodge had bought the throne, a seaside resort the big Chinese lantern, and two of the four Spanish chairs had found a home in a millionaire’s library.

Moreover—­and this was all the more remarkable in view of his early training—­a certain deference became apparent in the Dutchman’s manner not only toward Felix but toward his customers.  He no longer received them in his shirt-sleeves.  He bought some new clothes and sported a collar, necktie, and hat, duplicating those worn by Felix as near as his memory served.

Still more remarkable were the changes wrought among the neighbors in their attitude toward O’Day.  Until then they had, in their independent fashion, treated him like any of the other men who came in and out their several stores, pleased with his interest in the business, but quickly forgetting him as they became reabsorbed in the affairs of the day.  Now, as they told him what a good time they had had on the birthday, they raised their hats.  Porterfield went so far as to tell the radiant Kitty that her boarder was a “Jim Dandy,” and that if she should lay her hands on another to “trot him out.”

Kitty of course had expected these triumphs, but that it was she who had made them possible, and that but for her own individual efforts Felix might still be wandering around the streets in search of bed and board, apparently never crossed her mind.  He would have been just as splendid, she said to herself, and just as much of a man no matter who had helped and no matter where his feet had landed.

If O’Day were aware of the changes of public opinion going on around him, there was nothing in either his manner or in his speech to show it.  When they complimented him on the way in which he had utilized Otto’s old stock, producing so wonderful an interior, he would remark quietly that it was nothing to his credit.  He had always loved such things; that it came natural to some people to put things to rights, and that any one could have done as much.  It was only when some one alluded to Masie that his face would light up.  “Yes, charming, was she not?  Such a wonderful little lady, and so good!”