The Honorable Peter Stirling | Page 6

underneath. The set determination
of his look can best be explained by telling what had given his face
such rigid lines.

CHAPTER III.
A CRAB CHAPTER.
Mr. Pierce and those about him had clearly indicated by the
conversation, or rather monologue, already recorded, that Peter was in a
sense an odd number in the "Sunrise's" complement of pleasure-seekers.
Whether or no Mr. Pierce's monologue also indicated that he was not a
map who dealt in odd numbers, or showered hospitality on sons of
mill-overseers, the fact was nevertheless true. "For value received," or
"I hereby promise to pay," were favorite formulas of Mr. Pierce, and if
not actually written in such invitations as he permitted his wife to write
at his dictation to people whom he decided should be bidden to the

Shrubberies, a longer or shorter time would develop the words, as if
written in sympathetic ink. Yet Peter had had as pressing an invitation
and as warm a welcome at Mr. Pierce's country place as had any of the
house-party ingathered during the first week of July. Clearly something
made him of value to the owner of the Shrubberies. That something
was his chum, Watts D'Alloi.
Peter and Watts were such absolute contrasts that it seemed impossible
that they could have an interest or sympathy, in common. Therefore
they had become chums. A chance in their freshman year had brought
them together. Watts, with the refined and delicate sense of humor
abounding in collegians, had been concerned with sundry freshmen in
an attempt to steal (or, in collegiate terms, "rag") the chapel Bible, with
a view to presenting it to some equally subtle humorists at Yale,
expecting a similar courtesy in return from that college. Unfortunately
for the joke, the college authorities had had the bad taste to guard
against the annually attempted substitution. Two of the marauders were
caught, while Watts only escaped by leaving his coat in the hands of
the watchers. Even then he would have been captured had he not met
Peter in his flight, and borrowed the latter's coat, in which he reached
his room without detection. Peter was caught by the pursuers, and
summoned before the faculty, but he easily proved that the captured
coat was not his, and that he had but just parted from one of the tutors,
making it certain that he could not have been an offender. There was
some talk of expelling him for aiding and abetting in the true culprit's
escape, and for refusing to tell who it was. Respect for his motives,
however, and his unimpeachable record saved him from everything but
an admonition from the president, which changed into a discussion of
cotton printing before that august official had delivered half of his
intended rebuke. People might not enthuse over Peter, but no one ever
quarrelled with him. So the interview, after travelling from cotton
prints to spring radishes, ended with a warm handshake, and a
courteous suggestion that he come again when there should be no
charges nor admonitions to go through with. Watts told him that he was
a "devilish lucky" fellow to have been on hand to help, for Peter had
proved his pluck to his class, had made a friend of the president and, as
Watts considerately put it: "but for your being on the corner at 11:10

that evening, old chap, you'd never have known me." Truly on such
small chances do the greatest events of our life turn. Perhaps, could
Peter have looked into the future, he would have avoided that corner.
Perhaps, could he have looked even further, he would have found that
in that chance lay the greatest happiness of his life. Who can tell, when
the bitter comes, and we later see how we could have avoided it, what
we should have encountered in its place? Who can tell, when sweet
comes, how far it is sweetened by the bitterness that went before?
Dodging the future in this world is a success equal to that of the old
woman who triumphantly announced that she had borrowed money
enough to pay all her debts.
As a matter of course Watts was grateful for the timely assistance, and
was not slow either to say or show it. He told his own set of fellows
that he was "going to take that Stirling up and make him one of us,"
and Watts had a remarkable way of doing what he chose. At first Peter
did not respond to the overtures and insistance of the handsome,
well-dressed, free-spending, New York swell. He was too conscious of
the difference between himself and Watts's set, to wish or seek
identification with them. But no one who ever came under Watts's
influence could long stand out against his sunny face and frank manner,