Peter | Page 6

through the Receiving Teller's window and have passed in my book--I kept my account at the Exeter--and he has lifted his bushy shutters and gazed at me suddenly with his merry Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line of anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle older than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the winds when I met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street with that cheery lift of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift that the occupants of every office window on both sides of the street knew to be Peter's even when they failed to recognize the surtout and straight-brimmed high hat. Had any doubting Thomas, however, walked beside him on his way up Broadway to his rooms on Fifteenth Street, and had the quick, almost boyish lift of Peter's heels not entirely convinced the unbeliever of Peter's youth, all questions would have been at once disposed of had the cheery bank teller invited him into his apartment up three flights of stairs over the tailor's shop--and he would have invited him had he been his friend--and then and there forced him into an easy chair near the open wood fire, with some such remark as: "Down, you rascal, and sit close up where I can get my hands on you!" No--there was no trace of old age about Peter.
He was ready now--hatted, coated and gloved--not a hint of the ostrich egg or shaggy shutters visible, but a well-preserved bachelor of forty or forty-five; strictly in the mode and of the mode, looking more like some stray diplomat caught in the wiles of the Street, or some retired magnate, than a modest bank clerk on three thousand a year. The next instant he was tripping down the granite steps between the rusty iron railings--on his toes most of the way; the same cheery spring in his heels, slapping his thin, shapely legs with his tightly rolled umbrella, adjusting his hat at the proper angle so that the well-trimmed side whiskers--the veriest little dabs of whiskers hardly an inch long--would show as well as the fringes of his grey hair.
Not that he was anxious to conceal these slight indications of advancing years, nor did he have a spark of cheap personal vanity about him, but because it was his nature always to put his best foot foremost and keep it there; because, too, it behooved him in manner, dress and morals, to maintain the standards he had set for himself, he being a Grayson, with the best blood of the State in his veins, and with every table worth dining at open to him from Fourteenth Street to Murray Hill, and beyond.
"Now, it's all behind me, my dear boy," he cried, as we reached the sidewalk and turned our faces up Wall Street toward Broadway. "Fifteen hours to live my own life! No care until ten o'clock to- morrow. Lovely life, my dear Major, when you think of it. Ah, old Micawber was right--income one pound, expense one pound ten shillings; result, misery: income one pound ten, expense one pound, outcome, happiness! What a curse this Street is to those who abuse its power for good; half of them trying to keep out of jail and the other half fighting to keep out of the poor-house! And most of them get so little out of it. Just as I can detect a counterfeit bill at sight, my boy, so can I put my ringer on these money-getters when the poison of money-getting for money's sake begins to work in their veins. I don't mean the laying up of money for a rainy day, or the providing for one's family. Every man should lay up a six-months' doctor's bill, just as every man should lay up money enough to keep his body out of Potter's Field. It's laying up the SURPLUS that hurts."
Peter had his arm firmly locked in mine now.
"Now that concern of Breen & Company, where I found my error, are no better than the others. They are new to this whirlpool, but they will soon get in over their heads. I think it is only the third or fourth year since they started business, but they are already floating all sorts of schemes, and some of them--if you will permit me in confidence, strictly in confidence, my dear boy --are rather shady, I think: at least I judge so from their deposits."
"What are they, bankers?" I ventured. I had never heard of the firm; not an extraordinary thing in my case when bankers were concerned.
Peter laughed:
"Yes, BANKERS--all in capital letters--the imitation kind. Breen came from some place out