* * * * *

I found my grandfather holding forth in a swell suite of offices in the business district of Washington.

Near his great desk, with a little table and typewriter, sat a girl, very pretty—­he would see to that!... evidently his stenographer and private secretary.

As I stood by the railing, she observed me coldly once or twice, looking me over, before she thrust her pencil in her abundant hair and sauntered haughtily over to see what I was after.

Despite the fact that I informed her who I was, with eyes impersonal as the dawn she replied that she would see if Mr. Gregory could see me ... that at present he was busy with a conference in the adjoining room.

I sat and waited ... dusty and derelict, in the spick-and-span office, where hung the old-fashioned steel engravings on the wall, of Civil War battles, of generals and officers seated about tables on camp stools,—­bushy-bearded and baggy-trousered.

Finally my grandfather Gregory walked briskly forth.  He looked about, first, as if to find me.  His eyes, after hovering hawklike, settled, in a grey, level, impersonal glance, on me.

“Come in here,” he bade, not even calling me by name.

I stepped inside, trying hard to be bold.  But his precision and appearance of keen prosperity and sufficiency made me act, in spite of myself, deprecative.  So I sat there by him, in his private room, keying my voice shrill and voluble and high, as I always do, when I am not sure of my case.  And, worse, he let me do the talking ... watching me keenly, the while.

I put to him my proposition of having my life insured in his name, that I might borrow a thousand or so of him, on the policy, to go to college with....

“Ah, if he only lets me have what I ask,” I was dreaming, as I pleaded, “I’ll go to England ... to some college with cool, grey mediaeval buildings ... and there spend a long time in the quiet study of poetry ... thinking of nothing, caring for nothing else.”

“No! how absurd!” he was snapping decisively.  I came to from my vision.

“My dear Johnnie, your proposition is both absurd and—­” as if that were the last enormity—­“very unbusinesslike!”

“But I will then become a great poet!  On my word of honour, I will! and I will be a great honour to the Gregory family!”

He shook his head.  He rose, standing erect and slender, like a small flagpole.  As I rose I towered high over the little-bodied, trim man.

“Come, you haven’t eaten yet?”

“No!”

Well, he had a sort of a heart, after all ... some family feeling.

Walking slightly ahead, so as not to seem to be in my company, old Grandfather Gregory took me to a—­lunch counter ... bowing to numerous friends and acquaintances on the way ... once he stepped aside to a hurried conference, leaving me standing forlorn and solitary, like a scarecrow in a field.