Ewing was not sorry to hear this, though he thought it hardly polite to say so.
When they reached the house in Ninth Street Teevan ushered in his guest with a charming hospitality.
"Come to the library. The man will bring you an aperitif while I escape from this accursed frock coat. Not a word about your own dress! I took you as you were—but a jacket for me, if you'll pardon it." A servant entered in answer to his ring.
"Sherry and bitters, Farrish, and Mr. Ewing will dine with us. Is my son in?"
"Mr. Alden is dining out, sir."
"All the better, my boy. We shall be the chummier for Alden's absence. Make the house yours while I change. There are the evening papers; or perhaps you'll be interested by those cabinet bits—jades and scarabs and junk of that sort; a few fairish pieces of Greek glass—that Tanagra isn't bad, nor those Limoges enamels. The netsukes and sword guards are rather good Japanese bits, and there are one or two exquisite etchings on ivory—un instant, n'est-ce pas?"
Ewing lay back in his chair and sipped the sherry when it came. His enjoyment of the room's ensemble was too nearly satisfying to require examination of it by detail. It was a room of discreet and mellowed luxury, with an air of jaunty ripeness that distinguished its composer. The chairs solicited, the walls soothed, the broken light illumined perfectly without dazzling. He was thrilling agreeably to his host's evident interest in him when the latter returned, beaming with a smile of rare good-fellowship.
They were presently at table in a dining room whose plain old mahogany and thin silver produced, like the library, an impression of finished luxury without flaunt. The dinner itself possessed an atmosphere of sophistication, a temperament, even. It sated the exigent appetite of Ewing—his luncheon with Sydenham had been a mere adventure in meagerness—and sated without cloying, but it was more than food to him. As he ate, and drank of a burgundy whose merit he was ill qualified to appraise, he was conscious of a real fascination growing within him for the man who favored him with so distinguished a notice; who talked, seemingly, with the same nice care to please him that he would have exercised for a tableful of more difficult guests.
Nor did Teevan lack the parts of a listener. Ewing found himself talking much and enjoyably. With so tactful a listener, so good a friend, it was no longer necessary to remember that he was new in this land and unknowing of its smaller ways. It occurred to him, indeed, as he reviewed this memorable evening, that he had talked more than his host. But he was spared the youthful blush at this by remembering that he had been questioned persistently—"toled," as Ben would have said, with baits of inquiry. Incredible as it seemed, Teevan wished him to talk and had neatly made him do so. He felt that the little man must know him through and through. He had been, of course, a book in large print and short words, but he was flattered to believe that Teevan had found him worth opening.
And now he was certain he had discovered the longed-for friend; one soul had come from the oblivious throng to touch his own, to call him out and speak him fair. He was companioned by one as likable as he was learned, by one who meant, it was intimated, to seek every opportunity to befriend him.