“Oh, I cut mine off months ago,” said Bronston, “and besides it was always a modest, close-cropped affair. I never wore the ends of my moustache turned up like a cow’s horns.” He glanced at Keller quizzically. “Honestly, aside from any other considerations, I think you’d look better without one.”
“Let’s drop the moustache part,” said Keller, who seemed nettled. “Tell me, what’s wrong with my clothes?”
“To be frank,” criticised Bronston, “you run [425] just a bit to extremes. There’s that cap you bought yesterday evening when we stopped at that store on our way across town. It struck me as being—well, a trifle loud.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with this cap, if you’re asking me,” said Keller. He drew it forth from his opened handbag and slipped it on his head. It slipped down until his ears stopped it; its owner whistled in astonishment. “Yes, by gee!” he exclaimed, “there is something wrong with it too—it’s too large.” He drew it off and examined the little tag pasted in the crown. “Why, it’s a full half size too large.” He turned to Bronston.
“You told the clerk what numbers we wanted. Remember, don’t you, offering to attend to that while I was getting me a bathrobe, so as to save time? See if he made any mistake in yours?”
Bronston slid on the cap he had bought, a plain grey one; it stuck on the top of his head.
“Yes,” he said, “the idiot must have got the sizes twisted. This one is a half size too small for me.”
“And mine’s a half size too large,” said Keller. “I suppose we’ll have to trade.”
“There’s nothing else to do,” said Bronston, “although I can’t say I fancy this plaid design much.”
In accordance with the plan of Keller, as stated the night before, they went to breakfast together to find that they had been assigned [426] places at a five-seated, circular table on the balcony of the dining saloon. Their tablemates were an elderly couple, who said little to each other and nothing at all to strangers, and a tall, reserved, exceedingly silent Englishman. The indefinable something that marked these two men as hailing from different circles and different environments was accentuated in their table manners. Keller ate correctly enough, but there was a suggestion of grossness about him, an awkwardness in his fashion of holding his fork while he cut his ham. But he watched Bronston closely, and before the end of the meal had begun to copy Bronston’s method of handling a fork.