“You see, I fell into this thing KERCHUNK, and I'm just RATTLED—I'm rattled.” As Pearson slightly coughed again, he translated for him, “That's American for 'I don't know where I'm at'.”
“Those American jokes, sir, are very funny indeed,” answered Pearson, appreciatively.
“Funny!” the new Mr. Temple Barholm exclaimed even aggrievedly. “If you think this lay-out is an American joke to me, Pearson, there's where you're 'way off. Do you think it a merry jest for a fellow like me to sit up in a high chair in a dining-room like a cathedral and not know whether he ought to bite his own bread or not? And not dare to stir till things are handed to him by five husky footmen? I thought that plain-clothes man was going to cut up my meat, and slap me on the back if I choked.”
Pearson's sense of humor was perhaps not inordinate, but unseemly mirth, which he had swallowed at the reference to the setting hen and the Berlin wool antimacassar, momentarily got the better of him, despite his efforts to cough it down, and broke forth in a hoarse, ill-repressed sound.
“I beg pardon, sir,” he said with a laudable endeavor to recover his professional bearing. “It's your—American way of expressing it which makes me forget myself. I beg pardon.”
Tembarom laughed outright boyishly.
“Oh, cut that out,” he said. “Say, how old are you?”
“Twenty-five, sir.”
“So am I. If you'd met me three months ago, beating the streets of New York for a living, with holes in my shoes and a celluloid collar on, you'd have looked down on me. I know you would.”
“Oh, no, sir,” most falsely insisted Pearson.