At last the total of his suspicions penetrated, and unfortunately I suddenly shouted with laughter. I rocked back and forth in my chair in uncontrollable delight. When I at last looked up, he was smoking his cigar at a most uncompromising angle, with a hurt look upon his face.
"My dear Knowlton," I gasped at last, "I have no idea what impression I have given you, but really your last insinuation was too much for me. Like most young men of my age I'm probably engaged or soon will be—and as for the rest, you needn't worry."
"What do you mean by 'probably engaged or soon will be'?" He asked, still suspiciously, but obviously somewhat relieved at this announcement.
"I'm twenty-three—one usually finds the thing imminent at that age."
"Hell!" he replied. "This is business, not a joke. Booze and women don't mix with business."
"I've never mixed them much—even for pleasure," I retorted. "I hate headaches, and uneducated people bore me so that, be they as beautiful as Cleopatra, I can make nothing of them. I assure you I shall be perfectly safe in Deep Harbor, or anywhere else that the most ancient profession flourishes."
"I get you," he said, "and I guess it's straight all right, from all I've heard. Takes you a lot of words to say it, just as it takes you too much time to do things. But you'll get over that. Point is, Deep Harbor won't see you at all. Not in those clothes."
"They are simple country tweeds," I protested once more, for the thought that I might have to wear his kind horrified me. "My tailor is supposed to know his business."
"They don't fit, and they're loud enough to scare all the trotting horses on State Street. Don't you ever get 'em pressed? If you go sitting around in cafés drinking English ale, you'll make a bad impression. We've got to build up a new business and we've got to get people's confidence in us to do it. You can't float around town in the Middle West like you was attending a house party and get away with it. People won't think you are serious—when they don't think you are worse."
"I see," I replied. "Business, as I understand it, is so serious a thing out here that its pursuit means banishing from one's life, as a start, all sense of humour and all the little comforts and conveniences. One can have electric light, a porcelain bath, steam heat, and a bank account, but one mustn't have comfortable clothes, easy-going habits, or a genial feeling for the absurdities of solemn living."