Not in Honora’s memory was there a Christmas breakfast during which Peter Erwin did not appear, bringing gifts.  Peter Erwin, of whom we caught a glimpse doing an errand for Uncle Tom in the bank.  With the complacency of the sun Honora was wont to regard this most constant of her satellites.  Her awakening powers of observation had discovered him in bondage, and in bondage he had been ever since:  for their acquaintance had begun on the first Sunday afternoon after Honora’s arrival in St. Louis at the age of eighteen months.  It will be remembered that Honora was even then a coquette, and as she sat in her new baby-carriage under the pear tree, flirted outrageously with Peter, who stood on one foot from embarrassment.

“Why, Peter,” Uncle Tom had said slyly, “why don’t you kiss her?”

That kiss had been Peter’s seal of service.  And he became, on Sunday afternoons, a sort of understudy for Catherine.  He took an amazing delight in wheeling Honora up and down the yard, and up and down the sidewalk.  Brunhilde or Queen Elizabeth never wielded a power more absolute, nor had an adorer more satisfactory; and of all his remarkable talents, none were more conspicuous than his abilities to tell a story and to choose a present.  Emancipated from the perambulator, Honora would watch for him at the window, and toddle to the gate to meet him, a gentleman-in-waiting whose zeal, however arduous, never flagged.

On this particular Christmas morning, when she heard the gate slam, Honora sprang up from the table to don her green velvet coat.  Poor Peter!  As though his subjugation could be more complete!

“It’s the postman,” suggested Uncle Tom, wickedly.

“It’s Peter!” cried Honora, triumphantly, from the hall as she flunk open the door, letting in a breath of cold Christmas air out of the sunlight.

It was Peter, but a Peter who has changed some since perambulator days, —­just as Honora has changed some.  A Peter who, instead of fourteen, is six and twenty; a full-fledged lawyer, in the office of that most celebrated of St. Louis practitioners, Judge Stephen Brice.  For the Peter Erwins of this world are queer creatures, and move rapidly without appearing to the Honoras to move at all.  A great many things have happened to Peter since he had been a messenger boy in the bank.

Needless to say, Uncle Tom had taken an interest in him.  And, according to Peter, this fact accounted for all the good fortune which had followed.  Shortly before the news came of his brother’s death, Uncle Tom had discovered that the boy who did his errands so willingly was going to night school, and was the grandson of a gentleman who had fought with credit in the Mexican War, and died in misfortune:  the grandmother was Peter’s only living relative.  Through Uncle Tom, Mr. Isham became interested, and Judge Brice.  There was a certain scholarship in the Washington University which Peter obtained, and he worked his way through the law school afterwards.