While Raymond was taking his course abroad, Johnny McComas was shaping his course at home. A colorless, unbiased statement—as it was meant to be; one which, despite the slight difference between "taking" and "shaping," has no slant and displays no animus. Colorless, yes; too colorless, perhaps you will object. If so, I will reword the matter. While Raymond, then, was in Europe cultivating his gentler faculties, Johnny remained in America, strengthening certain specific powers. Or, again: while Raymond was preparing, or so he thought, for a desirably decorative place in the "world" (the world at large), Johnny was qualifying himself, as he felt sure, for an important and remunerative position in that particular section of the world to which he had decided to confine his endeavors. And if you ask me, after I have colored a colorless statement, to bias an unbiased one, I shall refuse. I am not taking sides. Each of them was following his own likings—not the worst of rules for a growing and avid organism.

Raymond wrote, of course,—it was impossible that he should not; and I think I showed one or two of his early letters to Johnny. Johnny was not exactly interested; vistas were opened for which he had no eyes and which possessed no appositeness to his own aims.

"Still over there, eh?" he asked, on my producing a second letter. "These are the years that count," he added. He was probably implying that the final score would make a better showing for the man who spent those years in his native and proper environment.

He disregarded the general drift of the letters, but hit upon one or two novel expressions, and repeated them, half-quizzical, half-intrigue.

"Still over there," I echoed. A developing nature, I felt, must reach out for whatever it needs; and, in simpler form, I said so.

"Well, I'm no misfit," he rejoined briefly. To "feel at home" at home—that, I presume, was the advantage he was asserting.

Johnny, "at home," was not long in outgrowing the opportunities of Dellwood Park. Though he did not make, quite yet, the central district, a year or two later found him in an older and more important suburb—one that had passed the first acuteness of speculation and had pretty well settled down to a regulated life. It was not a suburb of the first rank, nor even perhaps of the second; but it suited his tastes and his present purposes. The new business combined banking and real-estate, and the banking department even maintained a small safety-deposit vault. There was also some insurance; and a little of mortgage-broking. Johnny was a highly prized element in this business and was pleased from the start with the outlook.

"A fellow," he said, "can pick up more experience out there in a month than he could in one of these big downtown offices in a year."

Nearly two years passed before I was to see him in his new environment. There came up a bit of business for a suburban client of mine which could as well be settled at Johnny's place as at another. It needed no more than a glance to perceive that Johnny was the dominant factor of the little institution. His was the biggest roller-top seen through a maze of gilt letters on a vast sheet of plate glass by commuters turning the corner morning and evening. His, too, chiefly, the deference of clerks and office-boy. He was ruddy and robust, and seemed likely to impose himself anywhere, when the time came. Thus far, a small Forum, perhaps; but he was the CÆsar in it. He did not disdain to attend to my affair himself; he even showed an emphatic, if not ponderous, bonhomie.

Just as I was getting up to leave, a man of forty-five or more, with the general aspect of a contractor's foreman, put in his head. It was Johnny's father.

"I guess you know George Waite," Johnny said to him; "and I guess he knows you."

We shook hands, under Johnny's direction, and said that he was right. His father's hand—rough and with a broken nail or two—was that of a superintendent who on occasion helped with a plank or a mortarboard. He had an open face and a pleasant manner; he was not at all the dominant personage I remembered meeting in that "yard," years ago. Johnny, it seemed, was putting up a row of small houses on the suburb's edge, and his father was supervising the job. Johnny was pretty direct in saying what he wanted done, or not done, in connection with this work; and if his father made a suggestion it was as likely as not to be overruled. He was only one of the senators in Johnny's little curia, and probably far from the most important of them.

Johnny's father got away, after all, before I did. Johnny asked me to stay for a little, and there was not much for a young professional man to do after catching the 4.52 into town. We sat for a while talking of indifferent matters. Johnny, surrounded by his own prosperity, asked with a show of interest, and without condescension, about my progress in the law, and I was replying with the cautious vagueness of one whose practice is not yet all he hopes it will be. During this time I had noticed, through the maze of gilt lettering, a limousine standing just round the corner. Its curtains were drawn: "an odd circumstance," I had commented inwardly. All of a sudden the street-door of the bank burst open, and three masked men, brandishing revolvers, rushed in.

"You cover the cashier!" cried one; "we'll take care of the vault!"

Johnny McComas flung open a drawer, seized a revolver of his own, sprang to his feet—

Pardon me, dear reader. The simple fact is, I have suddenly been struck by my lack of drama. You see how awkwardly I provide it, when I try. What bank robbers, I ask you, would undertake such an adventure at half-past four in the afternoon? I cannot compete with the films. As a matter of fact, the vault stood locked, the tellers were gone, even the office-boy had stolen away, and Johnny and I were left alone together, exchanging rather feebly, and with increasing feebleness, some faint and unimportant boyhood reminiscences.... I feel abysmally abashed; let us open a new section.