"Yes, Mr. Mackworth, I can do it easily ... if they'll fit him."
There was an impersonality, however, about Merton's cryptic words that annoyed me.
"You are going home with Ally, John," Mackworth said to me, using my familiar name for the first time, "and borrow a suit of his clothes ... and you are coming back with him to dinner ... where you'll meet a very famous person—Miss Clara Martin."
Ally's blue serge suit was too short in the legs and arms for me ... otherwise it fitted. His gentleness and unobtrusive quietness entered into me, along with the putting on of his apparel. He led me upstairs in his house.
"Mr. Mackworth has asked me to put you up while you are in town ... because his own house is full at present, otherwise he would accommodate you there ... I guess we can make shift to entertain you properly.
"Here is the bathroom ... if you don't mind my saying it, when you throw the toilet seat up, let the water run from the tap over the wash basin ... my mother and sisters!" he trailed off in inaudible, deprecative urge of the proprieties.
Ally was anything but a small-town product. Suave, socially adroit, an instinctive creature of Good Form....
He came into the room he had given me to stay in. I looked like a different man, togged out in his clothes. Ally was surprised that I could wear his shoes ... he had such small feet ... I informed him proudly that I, too, had small feet....
"No, no, that is not the way to tie a tie ... let me show you ... you must make both ends meet exactly ... there, that's it!" and he stepped back, a look of satisfaction on his face ... he handed me a pearl stick pin.