He wondered that his vanity could have made him overlook the fact that what he was about to do was as much the regular order in prosperous Saint X, throughout the West for that matter, as posing as a European gentleman was the regular order of the "upper classes" of New York and Boston--and that even there the European gentleman was a recent and rather rare importation.

And Bolingbroke's hearty admiration, undeserved though Arthur felt it to be, put what he thought was nerve into him and stimulated what he then regarded as pride.
"After all, I'm not really a common workman," reflected he.

"It's like mother helping Mary." And he felt still better when, passing the little millinery shop of "Wilmot & Company" arm in arm with the great woolen manufacturer, he saw Estelle Wilmot--sweeping out.

Estelle would have looked like a storybook princess about royal business, had she been down on her knees scrubbing a sidewalk.

He was glad she didn't happen to see him, but he was gladder that he had seen her.