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.