[I]
"But I don't think I want to, Cham."
"Come along, Fanshaw, you've got to."
"But I wouldn't know what to say to them."
"They'll do the talking.... Look, you've got to come, date's all made an' everything."
Cham Mason stood in his drawers in the middle of the floor, eagerly waving a shirt into which he was fitting cuff-links. He was a pudgy-faced boy with pink cheeks and wiry light hair like an Irish terrier's. He leaned forward with pouting lips towards Fanshaw, who sat, tall and skinny, by the window, with one finger scratching his neck under the high stiff collar from which dangled a narrow necktie, blue, the faded color of his eyes.
"But jeeze, man," Cham whined.
"Well, what did you go and make it for?"
"Hell, Fanshaw, I couldn't know that Al Winslow was going to get scarlet fever.... Most fellers 'ld be glad of the chance. It isn't everybody Phoebe Sweeting'll go out with."
"But why don't you go alone?"