"Can you drive a car?"
Tom hesitated. "I don't know that you'd call it driving a car. I can drive—after a fashion. Mr. Quidmore used to let me run his Ford, when we were alone in it, and no one was looking. Since then I've sometimes driven the market delivery teams for a block or two, nothing much, just to see what it was like. I know I could pick it up with a few lessons. I'm a natural driver—a horse or anything. Why?"
"Because my old man said that if you could drive, he might help you get your summer's job."
"Where? What kind of job?"
"I don't know. He said that if you wanted to talk it over to come round to our house this evening at nine o'clock."
At nine that evening Tom was shown up into another of those rooms which marked the gulf between his own way of living and that of people like the Ansleys, and at the same time woke the atavistic pang. His impression was only a blurred one of comfort, color, shaded lights, and richness. From the many books he judged that it was what they would call the library, but any judgment was subconscious because the human presences came first. A man wearing a dinner jacket and scanning an evening paper was sunk into one deep armchair; in another a lady, demi-décolletée, was reading a book. It was his first intimation that people ever wore what he called "dress-clothes" when dining only with their families.
He was announced by Pilcher, who had led him upstairs. "This is the young man, sir."
Having reached something like friendly terms with the son and daughter, Tom had expected from the parents the kind of courtesy shown to strangers when you shake hands with them and ask them to sit down. Mr. Ansley only let the paper drop to his knees with an "Oh!" in response to the butler, and looked up.
"You're the young fellow my son has spoken of. He tells me you can drive a car."