Lessing was about Peter's own age and had large and cheerful notions of the probable increase of real-estate values in Pleasanton, combined with a just appreciation of the simple shrewdness which had so recommended Peter to his employers.
"You'd be a crackerjack to talk to the old ladies," Lessing generously praised him.

"I scare 'em; they think I'm too hopeful." That he didn't, however, have the same effect on young ladies was apparent from the very pretty one whom Peter used to see about, especially on early closing Saturday afternoons, helping him to shut up the office and get off to the ball game.

He couldn't have told why, but those were the days when Peter allowed the car to carry him on to the next block, before alighting, after which he would make a point of being particularly kind to Ellen.

It would never do for her to get a notion that the tapping of her crutch beside him had scared anything out of Peter's life which he might think worth having in it.
Along toward Thanksgiving time, on an occasion when Peter had just missed his car and had to wait for another one, Lessing--J.

B.on the door sign, though he was the sort that everybody who knew him called Julian--came quite out to the pavement and stood there with his hands in his pockets and his hair beginning to curl boyishly in the dampness, quite brimming over with good fortune.