“Oh, y-y-y-yes! you old lunatic,” said his mentor indulgently. “They all know you are coming, and you don’t know how keen they are to meet you. When I told Joe Cox you could speak Greek like a native, you should have seen his face.”
“Oh, b-b-but,” said the young man desperately, “I—I—I am not what you call—I—I am not what you call ‘up’ in these things!”
“Up, be blowed!” said Mr. Dodson. “You have got to develop your social instinct a bit. You old lunatic, what have you got to be so serious about? Haven’t you ever been to a party before?”
“Oh, n-n-no,” said William Jordan, Junior, with a scared face.
“Then it is time you broke the ice,” said his mentor sternly. “Every chap has got to go out into society. You can’t get on in the world without you do.”
“Oh, n-n-n-no,” protested the young man feebly.
“It will be good for you, my son,” said his inexorable mentor; “do you a power of good. You want bringing out badly. You are a regular D’Orsay to what you were; when I knew you first, I never met your equal for greenness. Of course you are not very bright now; but if you only form the habit of going out into society a bit, you are quite likely to walk away from one or two of the more fancied performers who are making the running at present. The other day when I told young Davis that you could speak Greek like a native, he as good as called me a liar. I’ll tell you what it is, my son; if only you could be got to think a bit more of yourself; if only you would cultivate the habit of putting on a reasonable amount of side; if only you would pull up your socks a bit, you might easily, in your small way, make a bit of a mark. Of course you will never be Number One in anything; you will never see your name in large type; you’ll never be a James Dodson, my son, if you live to be as old as Methuselah, for the very good reason that you haven’t got it in you. But my advice to you is, form the habit of going out into society and see what it will do for you. I’ll guarantee that in one year your old aunt at Hither Green won’t know her own nephew.”
William Jordan, Junior, however, was not to be shorn of his terrors by words so suave as these. Yet Mr. James Dodson had quite made up his mind that the party to be given in honour of his fiancée should not be baulked of its chief lion, whose surprising attainment in a dead language Mr. Dodson had published abroad to an equally surprising extent.
However, as the young man continued to persist in his unreasonable attempts to evade his responsibilities, a ray of meaning suddenly suffused the already sufficiently bright intelligence of Mr. James Dodson.
“Of course, my son, I see, I see!” he exclaimed; “if you have never been to a party before, you are wondering about your kit. I think I know you well enough by now, old boy, to ask whether you have got an evening suit?”