Peter: A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero

by Francis Hopkinson Smith

It was scheming Peter who saved the day.

“Put that young fellow to work, Henry,” he had said to MacFarlane the morning after the three had met at the Century Club.

“What does he know, Peter?”

“Nothing, except to speak the truth.”

And thus it had come to pass that within twenty-four hours thereafter the boy had shaken the dust of New York from his feet—even to resigning from the Magnolia, and a day later was found bending over a pine desk knocked together by a hammer and some ten-penny nails in a six-by-nine shanty, the whole situated at the mouth of a tunnel half a mile from Corklesville, where he was at work on the pay-roll of the preceding week.

Many things had helped in deciding him to take the proffered place. First, Peter had wanted it; second, his uncle did not want it, Corinne and his aunt being furious that he should go to work like a common laborer, or—as Garry had put it—“a shovel-spanked dago.” Third, Ruth was within calling distance, and that in itself meant Heaven. Once installed, however, he had risen steadily, both in MacFarlane's estimation and in the estimation of his fellow-workers; especially the young engineers who were helping his Chief in the difficult task before him. Other important changes had also taken place in the two years: his body had strengthened, his face had grown graver, his views of life had broadened and, best of all, his mind was at rest. Of one thing he was sure—no confiding young Gilberts would be fleeced in his present occupation—not if he knew anything about it.

Moreover, the outdoor life which he had so longed for was his again. On Saturday afternoons and Sundays he tramped the hills, or spent hours rowing on the river. His employer's villa was also always open to him—a privilege not granted to the others in the working force. The old tie of family was the sesame. Judge Breen's son was, both by blood and training, the social equal of any man, and although the distinguished engineer, being well born himself, seldom set store on such things, he recognized his obligation in Jack's case and sought the first opportunity to tell him so.

“You will find a great change in your surroundings, Mr. Breen,” he had said. “The little hotel where you will have to put up is rather rough and uncomfortable, but you are always welcome at my home, and this I mean, and I hope you will understand it that way without my mentioning it again.”

The boy's heart leaped to his throat as he listened, and a dozen additional times that day his eyes had rested on the clump of trees which shaded the roof sheltering Ruth.

That the exclusive Miss Grayson should now have invited him to pass some days at her home had brought with it a thrill of greater delight. Her opinion of the boy had changed somewhat. His willingness to put up with the discomforts of the village inn—“a truly dreadful place,” to quote one of Miss Felicia's own letters—and to continue to put up with them for more than two years, while losing nothing of his good-humor and good manners, had shaken her belief in the troubadour and tin-armor theory, although nothing in Jack's surroundings or in his prospects for the future fitted him, so far as she could see, to life companionship with so dear a girl as her beloved Ruth—a view which, of course, she kept strictly to herself.