"I like you in that," confided the flapper with an approving glance. He wondered if she meant the hat, the cravat or America's very best suit for the money.
"I like you in that," he retorted with equal vagueness, at last stung to speech.
"Oh, this!" explained the flapper in pleased deprecation. "It's just a little old rag. What's his darling name?"
"Eh? Name? Napoleon, Man and—I mean Napoleon. I call him Nap," he said shortly, feeling himself in chameleon-like sympathy with the cravat.
Grandma, on the seat in front of them, stared silently ahead, but there was something ominous in her rigidity. She had the air of a captor.
Once when his hand was on Nap the flapper brazenly patted it. He pretended not to notice.
"Everything's all right," she said.
"Of course," he answered, believing nevertheless that everything was all wrong.
They had come swiftly to the country and now swept along a wide highway that narrowed in perspective far and straight ahead of them. He watched the road, grateful for the slight hypnotic effect of its lines running toward him. He must play the waiting game.
"Here's the inn," said the flapper. They turned into a big green yard and drew up at the steps of a rambling old house begirt with wide piazzas on which tables were set. This would be the nice place where he was to give them tea and things. They descended from the car, and he was aware that they pleasantly drew the attention of many people who were already there having tea and things: the big car and Grandma and the flapper in her little old rag and Nap still panting ecstatically, and, not least, himself in dignified and a little bit different apparel, lightly grasping the yellow stick and the quite as yellow gloves. It was horribly open and conspicuous, he felt; still, getting out of a car like that—and the flapper's little old rag was something that had to be looked at—he was drunk with it. Following a waiter to a table he felt that the floor was not meeting his feet.