you’ll not have many guests,—in fact,”—he studied the
back of his hand intently,—“while that isn’t stipulated,
I doubt whether it was your grandfather’s intention
that you should surround yourself—”

“With boisterous companions!” I supplied the words
in my cheerfullest tone. “No; my conduct shall be exemplary,
Mr. Pickering,” I added, with affable irony.

He picked up a single sheet of thin type-written
paper and passed it across the table. It was a formal
acquiescence in the provisions of the will. Pickering
had prepared it in advance of my coming, and this assumption
that I would accept the terms irritated me.
Assumptions as to what I should do under given conditions
had always irritated me, and accounted, in a
large measure, for my proneness to surprise and disappoint
people. Pickering summoned a clerk to witness
my signature.

“How soon shall you take possession?” he asked. “I
have to make a record of that.”

“I shall start for Indiana to-morrow,” I answered.

“You are prompt,” he replied, deliberately folding in
quarters the paper I had just signed. “I hoped you
might dine with me before going out; but I fancy New
York is pretty tame after the cafés and bazaars of the
East.”