"My God, no!" said Graham. "I shall get it all back of course; otherwise,—Phut! As to telling father,—well—well, do you ever tell father anything? I'd rather face electrocution than go into father's room with such a tale. Once before—about six months ago—when I had to meet a bill for five thousand dollars, I had a little talk with mother, and after she had a fit she gave me a handful of her jewels to pawn. She was afraid of father, too. Within two months I got them out again. Steel did me very well that time; and mother,—bless her dear heart!—called me a very clever boy, and said: 'What a brain you have, darling, but please don't do it again!' Oh, my God, Peter! You don't know what Wall Street means. It's hell! It's marvellous! It's life! One of these days when a real good chance comes I'll go some plunge, and then you'll see me living quietly in the country breeding ponies or dogs or chickens or something, and I'll marry and settle down."
Peter got up, re-loaded his pipe, and said: "Just think of it! You're two years younger than I am. I've not begun to live and you're in the whirl of money and risk. In the meantime there's father so busy experimenting with microbes that he hasn't one idea of what his boys are doing, or are likely to do—absolutely content to let them find their feet unaided! Well, I suppose he knows what he's doing,—but what you've just told me makes me wonder whether it wouldn't be wise for him to experiment a little bit with us for a change. What d'you think?"
Graham shrugged his shoulders. With the light on his face he looked older than his brother, and there was something in his eyes which showed that he had already gazed at life very much more closely than the big healthy fellow who was his host. "Oh, well," he said—pouring himself out a rather stiff whiskey—"we've never known quite what it was to have a father,—I mean except as a sort of aloof institution, a vague person who educated us and placed us out. I should resent his butting in now. There's someone coming up your stairs, isn't there?"
There was. It was Kenyon, who rattled money in his trousers pocket with a little smile at the corners of his sophisticated mouth.
V
Peter put in the time of his life during the next few days, and like the great big simple fellow that he was, revelled in being the little hero of his family.
From morning until night he kept them on the move, taking them to all his favorite haunts in the town and out in the country, introducing to them whole flocks of his friends, with whom they had tea and lunch; guiding them into the strange quiet chapels that were filled with the aroma of dead years like a bowl of dry rose-leaves; going with them into the sweet, quiet, sacred, stately seclusion of New College Garden and into the echoing cloisters of Magdalen. They were good days, memorable days, giving them all mental pictures that even time would not blur nor age rub out. To Peter the best of all the afternoons was the one when he looked up at the St. John's barge as he paddled out into the river in the College Eight and caught the eager and excited eyes of all the people who meant so much to him, and especially those of Betty. He rowed that afternoon as he had never rowed before, carrying with him all along the stream the raucous shouts of the members of his college who tore along the tow-path almost demented with enthusiasm, firing pistols, turning rattles and screaming "St. John's! St. John's! Give her ten! Give her ten! Up! Up!" And finally, when he staggered out of the boat almost sick from exertion, his knees shaking under him, the thought that came to him as he heard the incessant cries of "Good old Peter!" was "Thank God for this! The Governor will get something back for all he has done for me." He just waved his hand to his people, felt his way into the barge, laid himself flat on the floor and underwent the soothing process of being rubbed and sponged down—and all the while he smiled and was very happy.
He didn't catch the look of maternal agony in his mother's eyes nor her remarks—which was perhaps just as well. Seeing her great big boy crumpled up over his oar before he was assisted out of the boat, seeing him stand rocking like a drunken man with his great chest heaving and his face the color of a green apple, she leaned over the rail and cried out: "Oh, my dear, what have they done to you? Oh, Hunter, you must not let him do these things, he'll kill himself! Oh, Peter, Peter!"
As a matter of fact, no one heard her. There was too much good solid roar going on. Every lusty-throated St. John's man was shouting at the full capacity of his lungs. Oh, but it was a good scene! And for the quiet, studious Doctor who had sat day after day for the greater part of his life watching bacteriological experiments, with the most intense interest, it was one that caused his blood to move almost dangerously through his veins and make him shout for the first time in his life.