“I’m dreadfully sorry to lose him,” his landlady informed her other boarders, availing herself, perhaps, of the chance to deliver a side hit at some of them.  “He never has complained once, since he came here, and he kept his room as neat as if he had to take care of it himself.”

“Well,” said the box-office oracle, “I guess he’s O.K., if he is a bit stiff; and a fellow who’s best man to a big New York swell, and gets his name in all the papers, doesn’t belong in a seven-dollar, hash-seven-days-a-week, Bleecker Street boarding-house.”

Peter fitted his room up simply, the sole indulgence (if properly so called) being a bath, which is not a usual fitting of a New York business office, consciences not yet being tubbable.  He had made his mother show him how to make coffee, and he adopted the Continental system of meals, having rolls and butter sent in, and making a French breakfast in his own rooms.  Then he lunched regularly not far from his office, and dined wherever his afternoon walk, or evening plans carried him.  He found that he saved no money by the change, but he saved his feelings, and was far freer to come and go as he chose.

He did not hear from the honeymoon party.  Watts had promised to write to him and send his address “as soon as we decide whether we pass the winter in Italy or on the Nile.”  But no letter came.  Peter called on the Pierces, only to find them out, and as no notice was taken of his pasteboard, he drew his own inference, and did not repeat the visit.

Such was the first year of Peter’s New York life.  He studied, he read, he walked, and most of all, he waited.  But no client came, and he seemed no nearer one than the day he had first seen his own name on his office door.  “How much longer will I have to wait?  How long will my patience hold out?” These were the questions he asked himself, when for a moment he allowed himself to lose courage.  Then he would take to a bit of wall-gazing, while dreaming of a pair of slate-colored eyes.

CHAPTER XI.

New friends.

Mr. Converse had evidently thought that the only way for Peter to get on was to make friends.  But in this first year Peter did not made a single one that could be really called such.  His second summer broadened his acquaintance materially, though in a direction which promised him little law practice.

When the warm weather again closed the courts and galleries, and brought an end to the concerts and theatres, Peter found time harder to kill, the more, because he had pretty well explored the city.  Still he walked much to help pass the time, and to get outside of his rooms into the air.  For the same reason he often carried his book, after the heat of the day was over, to one of the parks, and did his reading there.  Not far from his office, eastwardly, where two streets met at an angle, was a small open space too limited to be called a square, even if its