PART THREE.
IN WHICH PETER BECOMES A BACHELOR I The day before leaving for his summer vacation Peter was notified that he was wanted in his private office by the younger Siegel Brother.
Though he couldn't quite fall in with the dark prognostications of Blinders that he was about to be mulcted of his salary by a plot which had been plainly indicated by the marked partiality of our Mr.Croker, the incident gave him some uneasiness.

The young Siegel Brother must have been younger than somebody of course, though it couldn't have been by more than a scratch, and he might have been any age without betraying it, so deeply was he sunk in the evidence of the surpassing quality of the grocery department.

However, there was something surprisingly young looking out at Peter from the junior brother's red and white rotundity, at which he took heart immensely.
"Weatheral, Peter, canned goods, recommended by Mr.Greenslet," Siegel Brother ticked him off from a manilla envelope.

"Just a little honorarium, Mr.Weatheral, we are in the habit of distributing to such of our employees as make practical suggestions to the advantage of the business." Contriving to make his hands meet in front of him by clasping them very high up on his chest, Siegel Brother assumed that he had folded his arms, and waited to see what Peter would do about it.
"We have also a little savings bank for the benefit of our employees which pays 3 per cent., yet I believe we have you not among our depositors." There was the slightest possible burr to his speech as though it were blunted by so much fatness.
"Well, you see, sir--there's a mortgage." Peter was afraid he should damage himself by the admission, but the firm heard him out.
"How much ?" "It was a thousand, but we've got it down to seven hundred--six hundred and sixty," Peter corrected himself with a glance at his honorarium.
"And the farm, it is worth----" Siegel Brother parted his hands slightly to admit of any valuation.
"Two thousand." "So! Well, Mr.Weatheral, that is not so bad, and if I were you, when I had occasion to speak of it I would say, not 'I am paying a mortgage,' that is dead work, Mr.Weatheral, but 'I am buying a farm.' It goes easier so." "Thank you, sir, I'll remember." He supposed his employer was done with him, but as he turned to go he heard his name again.
"You will report to our Mr.Croker when you return, Mr.Weatheral; he thinks he can use you." Two weeks later when he came back rested from Bloombury, Peter found himself visible to at least ten persons, all of whom pertained to the boarding-house of the exclusive Mrs.Blodgett, where, by the advice of J.Wilkinson Cohn, he engaged a small room on the third floor with a window opening some six feet from the rear wall of a wholesale stationery, and one electric light discreetly placed to discourage the habit of reading in bed.
From this time on he was visible to Mrs.Blodgett and Aggie and Miss Thatcher, whom he already knew as the pure food demonstrator in dairy products, to two inconsiderable young women from the wholesale stationer's, and a gentleman from a shoe store, the whole of whose physiognomy appeared to be occupied with the effort to express an engaging youthfulness which the crown of his head explicitly denied.

He was occasionally visible to the representative of gentlemen's outfitters who was engaged to Aggie and took Sunday dinners with them, and he was particularly and pleasingly visible to J.Wilkinson Cohn and Miss Minnie Havens.