chat with me, I have some things you might care to see. What time like the present? It is early hours yet and you will be doing an old man who sleeps only poorly a kindness.”
What a night of nights! Peter, trembling with excitement, felt Henry Galleon put his arm in his, felt the weight of the great man's body. They walked slowly along and the moon and the stars and the lights on the river and the early little leaves in the trees and the stones of the houses and the little “tish-tish “of the water against the Embankment seemed to say—"Oh! Peter Westcott's going to have a chat with Henry Galleon! Did you ever hear such a thing!”
Peter was sorry that his Embankment was deserted and that there was no one to see them go into the house together. He drew a great breath as the door closed behind them. The house was large and dark and mysterious. The rest of the family were still out at some party. Henry Galleon drew Peter into his own especial quarters and soon they were sitting in a lofty library, its walls covered with books that stretched to the ceiling. Peter meanwhile buried in a huge arm-chair and feeling that Henry Galleon's eyes were piercing him through and through.
The old man talked for some time about other things—talked wonderfully about the great ones of the earth whom he had known, the great things that he had seen. It was amazing to Peter to hear the gods of his world alluded to as “poor old S——— poor fellow! . . . Yes, indeed. I remember his coming into breakfast one day . . .” or “You were asking about T——— Old Wallie, as we used to call him—poor fellow, poor fellow—we lived together in rooms for some time. That was before I married—and perilously, dangerously—I might almost say magnificently near starvation we were too. . . .”
Peter already inflamed with that earlier half-hour in the garden now breathed a portentous air. He was with the Gods . . . there on the Olympian heights he drank with them, he sang songs with them, with mighty voices they applauded “Reuben Hallard.” He drank in his excitement many whiskies and sodas and soon the white room with its books was like the inside of a golden shell. The old man
