Nor could it be compared to the way in which he stripped off his black bombazine office-coat with its baggy pockets--quite a disreputable-looking coat I must say--taking it by the nape of the neck, as if it were some loathsome object to be got rid of, and hanging it upon a hook behind him; nor to the way in which he pulled up his shirt sleeves and plunged his white, long-fingered, delicately modeled hands into the basin, as if cleanliness were a thing to be welcomed as a part of his life.

These carefully dried, each finger by itself--not forgetting the small seal ring on the little one--he gave an extra polish to his glistening pate with the towel, patted his fresh, smooth-shaven cheeks with an unrumpled handkerchief which he had taken from his inside pocket, carefully adjusted his white neck-cloth, refastening the diamond pin--a tiny one but clear as a baby's tear--put on his frock-coat with its high collar and flaring tails, took down his silk hat, gave it a flourish with his handkerchief, unhooked his overcoat from a peg behind the door (a gray surtout cut something like the first Napoleon's) and stepped out to where I sat.
You would never have put him down as being sixty years of age had you known him as well as I did--and it is a great pity you didn't.

Really, now that I come to think of it, I never did put him down as being of any age at all.

Peter Grayson and age never seemed to have anything to do with each other.

Sometimes when I have looked in through the Receiving Teller's window and have passed in my book--I kept my account at the Exeter--and he has lifted his bushy shutters and gazed at me suddenly with his merry Scotch-terrier eyes, I have caught, I must admit, a line of anxiety, or rather of concentrated cautiousness on his face, which for the moment made me think that perhaps he was looking a trifle older than when I last saw him; but all this was scattered to the winds when I met him an hour afterward swinging up Wall Street with that cheery lift of the heels so peculiarly his own, a lift that the occupants of every office window on both sides of the street knew to be Peter's even when they failed to recognize the surtout and straight-brimmed high hat.