The shoe gentleman, whose very juvenile name was Wally Whitaker, didn't believe in such a mincing at prosperity.

He talked freely about tips and corners and margins and had been known to make twenty-seven dollars in copper once.

He offered Peter some exclusive inside information in B and C's before he had been in the house a month.
"Well, you see," Peter explained himself, "I'm buying a farm up our way!" His fellow boarders laid down their forks to look at him; he could see reflected from their several angles how he had placed himself by the mere statement of his situation.

He felt at once the resistance it gave him, the sense of something to pull against, of having got his feet under him.

It was the point at which the conquest of the mortgage dragon began to present itself to him as a thing accomplished rather than a thing escaped.
It must have been this feeling of release which opened up for him, from pictures that he saw occasionally with Miss Havens on Sundays, from books he read and discussed with her, avenues that appeared to lead more or less directly to the House.