To make Peter the more conscious of this, they asked him various questions.
"Do you like-- ?" a popular soubrette of the day.
"What, never seen her?
Where on earth have you been living ?" "Oh?
Well, she's got too good legs to waste herself on such a little place." They would like to have asked him questions about himself, but feared to seem to lower themselves from their fancied superiority, by showing interest in Peter.

One indeed did ask him what business he was in.
"I haven't got to work yet," answered Peter "Looking for a place" was the mental comment of all, for they could not conceive of any one entitled to practise law not airing his advantage.
So they went on patronizing Peter, and glorifying themselves.

When time had developed the facts that he was a lawyer, a college graduate, and a man who seemed to have plenty of money (from the standpoint of dry-goods clerks) their respect for him considerably increased.

He could not, however, overcome his instinctive dislike to them.

After the manly high-minded, cultivated Harvard classmates, every moment of their society was only endurable, and he neither went to their rooms nor asked them to his.