“Well?”
“And when you’d entered into the other you wouldn’t want it on your mind—on your conscience, as you might sye—that there was a young lydy in the world as you’d done a kind o’ wrong to.”
Allerton took three strides across the corner of the room, and three strides back to the fireplace again. “How am I going to escape that? She says she won’t let me give her any money.”
“Oh, money!” Steptoe brushed money aside as if it had no value. “She wouldn’t of course. Not ’er sort.”
“But what is ’er sort. She seemed one thing yesterday, and to-day she’s another.”
“That’s somethink like what I mean. That young lydy ’as growed more in twenty-four hours than lots’d grow in twenty-four years.” He considered how best to express himself further. “Did Mr. Rash ever 154 notice that it isn’t bein’ born of a certain kind o’ family as’ll myke a man a gentleman? Of course ’e did. But did ’e ever notice that a man’ll often not be born of a certain kind o’ family, and yet be a gentleman all the syme?”
“I know what you’re driving at; but it depends on what you mean by a gentleman.”
“And I couldn’t ’ardly sye—not no more than I could tell you what the smell of a flower was, not even while you was a-smellin’ of it. You know a gentleman’s a gentleman, and you may think it’s this or that what mykes ’im so, but there ain’t no wye to put it into words. Now you, Mr. Rash, anybody’d know you was a gentleman what merely looked at you through a telescope; but you couldn’t explyne it, not if you was took all to pieces like the works of a clock. It ain’t nothink you do and nothink you sye, because if we was to go by that––”
“Good Lord, stop! We’re not talking about me.”
“No, Mr. Rash. We’re talkin’ about the queer thing it is what mykes a gentleman, and I sye that I can’t sye. But I know. Now, tyke Eugene. ’E’s just a chauffeur. But no one couldn’t be ten minutes with Eugene and not know ’e’s a gentleman through and through. Obligin’—good-mannered—modest—polite to the very cat ’e is—and always with that nice smile—wouldn’t you sye as Eugene was a gentleman, if anybody was to arsk you, Mr. Rash?”