“What do you think you look like to him?” his host inquired.
“I look as if I'd eat out of his hand,” Tembarom answered, quite unbiased by any touch of wounded vanity. “Why shouldn't I? And I'm not trying to wake him up, either. I like to look that way to him and to his sort. It gives me a chance to watch and get wise to things. He's a high-school education in himself. I like to hear him talk. I asked him to come and stay at the house so that I could hear him talk.”
“Did he introduce the mammoth mines in his first call?” the duke inquired.
“Oh, I don't mean that kind of talk. I didn't know how much good I was going to get out of him at first. But he was the kind I hadn't known, and it seemed like he was part of the whole thing—like the girls with title that Ann said I must get next to. And an easy way of getting next to the man kind was to let him come and stay. He wanted to, all right. I guess that's the way he lives when he's down on his luck, getting invited to stay at places. Like Lady Mallowe,” he added, quite without prejudice.
“You do sum them up, don't you?” smiled the duke.
“Well, I don't see how I could help it,” he said impartially. “They're printed in sixty-four point black-face, seems to me.”
“What is that?” the duke inquired with interest. He thought it might be a new and desirable bit of slang. “I don't know that one.”
“Biggest type there is,” grinned Tembarom. “It's the kind that's used for head-lines. That's newspaper-office talk.”
“Ah, technical, I see. What, by the way, is the smallest lettering called?” his grace followed up.
“Brilliant,” answered Tembarom.