But when the
callers had departed he became quite almost plaintive to me.
"I say, you know, I shan't be wanted to pal up much with that chap,
shall I? I mean to say, he wears so many clothes. They make me writhe
as if I wore them myself. It won't do, you know."
I told him very firmly that this was piffle of the most wretched sort.
That his caller wore but the prescribed number of garments, each vogue
to the last note, and that he was a person whom one must know. He
responded pettishly that he vastly preferred the gentleman driver with
whom he had spent the afternoon, and "Sour-dough," as he was now
calling Cousin Egbert.
"Jolly chaps, with no swank," he insisted. "We drove quite almost
everywhere--waterworks, cemetery, sash-and-blind factory. You know I
thought 'blind factory' was some of their bally American slang for the
shop of a chap who made eyeglasses and that sort of thing, but nothing
of the kind. They saw up timbers there quite all over the place and
nail them up again into articles. It's all quite foreign."
Nor was his account of his drive with Belknap-Jackson the following
day a bit more reassuring.
"He wouldn't stop again at the sash-and-blind factory, where I wished
to see the timbers being sawed and nailed, but drove me to a country
club which was not in the country and wasn't a club; not a human
there, not even a barman.
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