The recognition and the tribute to my father were so graciously given that I warmed with gratitude and pride, while Mr. Kyme smiled a little, remarking that I was a friend of Jerry’s.  Theodore Watling, for being here, had suddenly assumed in my eyes a considerable consequence, though the note he struck in that house was a strange one.  It was, however, his own note, and had a certain distinction, a ring of independence, of the knowledge of self-worth.  Dinner at Weathersfield we youngsters had usually found rather an oppressive ceremony, with its shaded lights and precise ritual over which Mr. Kyme presided like a high priest; conversation had been restrained.  That night, as Johnnie Laurens afterwards expressed it, “things loosened up,” and Mr. Watling was responsible for the loosening.  Taking command of the Kyme dinner table appeared to me to be no mean achievement, but this is just what he did, without being vulgar or noisy or assertive.  Suavitar in modo, forbiter in re.  If, as I watched him there with a newborn pride and loyalty, I had paused to reconstruct the idea that the mention of his name would formerly have evoked, I suppose I should have found him falling short of my notion of a gentleman; it had been my father’s opinion; but Mr. Watling’s marriage to Gene Hollister’s aunt had given him a standing with us at home.  He possessed virility, vitality in a remarkable degree, yet some elusive quality that was neither tact nor delicacy—­though related to these differentiated him from the commonplace, self-made man of ability.  He was just off the type.  To liken him to a clothing store model of a well-built, broad-shouldered man with a firm neck, a handsome, rather square face not lacking in colour and a conventional, drooping moustache would be slanderous; yet he did suggest it.  Suggesting it, he redeemed it:  and the middle western burr in his voice was rather attractive than otherwise.  He had not so much the air of belonging there, as of belonging anywhere—­one of those anomalistic American citizens of the world who go abroad and make intimates of princes.  Before the meal was over he had inspired me with loyalty and pride, enlisted the admiration of Jerry and Conybear and Johnnie Laurens; we followed him into the smoking-room, sitting down in a row on a leather lounge behind our elders.

Here, now that the gentlemen were alone, there was an inspiring largeness in their talk that fired the imagination.  The subject was investments, at first those of coal and iron in my own state, for Mr. Watling, it appeared, was counsel for the Boyne Iron Works.

“It will pay you to keep an eye on that company, Mr. Kyme,” he said, knocking the ashes from his cigar.  “Now that old Mr. Durrett’s gone—­”

“You don’t mean to say Nathaniel Durrett’s dead!” said Mr. Kyme.

The lawyer nodded.

“The old regime passed with him.  Adolf Scherer succeeds him, and you may take my word for it, he’s a coming man.  Mr. Durrett, who was a judge of men, recognized that.  Scherer was an emigrant, he had ideas, and rose to be a foreman.  For the last few years Mr. Durrett threw everything on his shoulders....”