Mr. Braid pattered on:
“For a truly great and towering giant of literature, our friend seems very easy to control in money matters. Docile—that’s the word for it, docile. He let me tip the porter at the club for bringing down these two tons of his detachable belongings, and on the way up Madison Avenue he deigned to let me jump out and go in a shop and buy him an extra strap for his blanket roll, and he graciously suffered me to pay for a telegram he sent from the other side, and also for that shoe-shine and those evening papers he got on the boat. Told me he hadn’t learned to distinguish our Yankee small change. Always getting the coins mixed up, he said. Maybe he hasn’t had any experience.”
“Rather brusk in his way of speaking to a fellow,” admitted Mr. Gridley. “You might almost call it short. And rather fussy about getting what he wants, I should say. Still, I suppose he has a great deal on his mind.”
“Launcelot will fairly dote on him,” said Mr. Braid. “Mark my words, Launcelot is going to fall in love with him on the spot.”
Meanwhile, Mrs. Gridley was endeavoring to explain to Mr. Boyce-Upchurch why it was that in a town lying practically on a river so large and so wide as the Hudson there could be a water shortage. He couldn’t appear to grasp it. He declared it to be extraordinary.
This matter of a water shortage apparently lingered in his mind, for half an hour later following tea, as he was on the point of going aloft to his room to dress for dinner he called back to his host from half-way up the stairs:
“I say, Gridley, no water in the taps, your wife tells me. Extraordinary, what? Tell you what: I’ll be needing a rub-down tonight—stuffy climate here and all that. So later on just let one of your people fetch up a portable tub to my room and bring along lots of water, will you? The water needn’t be hot. Like it warm, though. Speak about it, will you, to that slavey of yours.”
Mrs. Gridley gave a quick little wincing gasp and a hunted look about her. But Delia had gone to carry Mr. Boyce-Upchurch’s waistcoat upstairs. The episode of the waistcoat occurred a few minutes before, immediately after the guest had been ushered into the house.
“Frightfully warm,” he remarked on entering the living-room. “Tell me, is America always so frightfully warm in summer?” Then, without waiting for an answer, he said: “Think I must rid myself of the wescut. All over perspiration, you know.” So saying, he took off first his coat and next his waistcoat and hung the waistcoat on a chair and then put the coat back on again. Still, as Mr. Braid remarked in an undertone to nobody in particular, it wasn’t exactly as though Mr. Boyce-Upchurch had stripped to his shirt-sleeves because, so Mr. Braid pointed out to himself, the waistband of the trousers came up so high, especially at the back, and the suspenders—he caught himself here and mentally used the word “braces” instead—the braces were so nice and broad that you didn’t see enough of the shirt really to count.