“The job's out of my line,” he protested.
“I know better,” said I. “I've always seen the parlor under the stable in you. We'll begin right away. What do you think of these clothes?”
“Well—they're not exactly noisy,” he said. “But—they're far from silent. That waistcoat—” He stopped and gave me another nervous, timid look. He found it hard to believe a man of my sort, so self-assured, would stand the truth from a man of his second-fiddle sort.
“Go on!” I commanded. “Speak out! Mowbray Langdon had on one twice as loud the other day at the track.”
“But, perhaps you'll remember, it was only his waistcoat that was loud—not he himself. Now, a man of your manner and voice and—you've got a look out of the eyes that'd wake the dead all by itself. People can feel you coming before they hear you. When they feel and hear and see all together—it's like a brass band in scarlet uniform, with a seven-foot, sky-blue drum major. If your hair wasn't so black and your eyes so steel-blue and sharp, and your teeth so big and strong and white, and your jaw such a—such a—jaw—”
“I see the point,” said I. And I did. “You'll find you won't need to tell me many things twice. I've got a busy day before me here; so we'll have to suspend this until you come to dine with me at eight—at my rooms. I want you to put in the time well. Go to my house in the country and then up to my apartment; take my valet with you; look through all my belongings—shirts, ties, socks, trousers, waistcoats, clothes of every kind. Throw out every rag you think doesn't fit in with what I want to be. How's my grammar?”
I was proud of it; I had been taking more or less pains with my mode of speech for a dozen years. “Rather too good,” said he. “But that's better than making the breaks that aren't regarded as good form.”
“Good form!” I exclaimed. “That's it! That's what I want! What does 'good form' mean?”
He laughed. “You can search me,” said he. “I could easier tell you—anything else. It's what everybody recognizes on sight, and nobody knows how to describe. It's like the difference between a cultivated 'jimson' weed and a wild one.”
“Like the difference between Mowbray Langdon and me,” I suggested good-naturedly. “How about my manners?”