There was no water in sight. How did these people expect a man to brush his hair without water? No pomade, either. Not even brilliantine. Could it be that folk of the Standish class did not use such aids? Or did they keep them locked up? Caleb’s eyes swept the room and its quiet furnishings appraisingly. It did not represent at all his idea of luxury. Not a bow, not a tidy, not a fancy screen nor a lambrequin in sight. Yet there was an indefinable something about the place that met his approval. He fell to walking back and forth, uneasily; pausing every now and then in front of the cheval glass.
Amzi Caine, who had come early in the futile hope of a word alone with Letty before the dinner, found him thus employed. Conover swung around on his friend with a grunt of relief.
“Hello!” he said, his heavy voice actually cordial, “I begun to think it was Judgment Day an’ that I was the first one resurrected. How’d I look? All right? Nothin’ wrong in this get-up is there?”
“The glass of fashion and the mould of form!” laughed Caine, “Behold a phenomenon! The worker of miracles—and Steeloids—deigns to ask a mere mortal’s opinion!”
“All right, is it?” said Conover, relieved. “Say,” he went on suspiciously, “You’re guying me! Tell me what’s wrong. Be honest, can’t you?”
“If you insist,” replied Caine, nettled at the domineering tone, “I can’t just hint that most men don’t wear diamond studs with evening dress, and that your tie is rather too evidently a ‘masterpiece not made by hands.’ Otherwise, you look very fit indeed.”
Caleb scowled in the glass at the flashing studs and the ready-made lawn tie. Then, brushing away the gnat of worry, he answered, carelessly:
“I don’t like to dress like everybody else. Too much sameness for me. It’s well enough for fellers without an idee or a scrap of originality in their heads. I like to do a little different.”
“A Beau Brummell come to Judgment!” mocked Caine, “But with diamonds rising in price ten per cent. a year, I hope you won’t set the fashion just yet. You’ll break us. It’s all very well to dress regardless of expense—or style—but—”
“Let it go at that,” ordered Conover sullenly, “There’s something else I wanted to ask you about, first time I saw you alone. You told me one day that Desirée Shevlin could take any place she wanted, in s’ciety here, if only she married the right sort of a man. Remember?”