The old tie of family was the sesame.

Judge Breen's son was, both by blood and training, the social equal of any man, and although the distinguished engineer, being well born himself, seldom set store on such things, he recognized his obligation in Jack's case and sought the first opportunity to tell him so.
"You will find a great change in your surroundings, Mr.Breen," he had said.

"The little hotel where you will have to put up is rather rough and uncomfortable, but you are always welcome at my home, and this I mean, and I hope you will understand it that way without my mentioning it again." The boy's heart leaped to his throat as he listened, and a dozen additional times that day his eyes had rested on the clump of trees which shaded the roof sheltering Ruth.
That the exclusive Miss Grayson should now have invited him to pass some days at her home had brought with it a thrill of greater delight.

Her opinion of the boy had changed somewhat.

His willingness to put up with the discomforts of the village inn--"a truly dreadful place," to quote one of Miss Felicia's own letters--and to continue to put up with them for more than two years, while losing nothing of his good-humor and good manners, had shaken her belief in the troubadour and tin-armor theory, although nothing in Jack's surroundings or in his prospects for the future fitted him, so far as she could see, to life companionship with so dear a girl as her beloved Ruth--a view which, of course, she kept strictly to herself.
But she still continued to criticise him, at which Peter would rub his hands and break out with: "Fine fellow!--square peg in a square hole this time.