Kenyon smiled. He had heard of the wine agent in society and had known the cigarette boomer at college.
“Our most philanthropic purposes are not always appreciated,” said he. The other shook his head in a way expressive of a wide and early acquaintance with that particular fact. “Now Farbush is a friend of mine,” proceeded Kenyon, “but I must admit that he’s rather shaky upon a good many things. Did he build this house, do you know?”
“I think he did.”
“That is what I thought. It’s about the sort of thing he would have put up,” criticised Kenyon, with a severe expression, which said as plainly as words that architectural sins would only be properly dealt with if placed among the deadly kind. “It’s all out of reason, you know.”
“I couldn’t say, really,” returned the pale-eyed young man, hesitatingly. “Architecture is a bit out of my line, you see.”
Kenyon had been more or less confident of that; nevertheless he was pleased to hear the confession, and launched forth in a very caustic condemnation of Farbush’s mansion.
“But it’s the way the rooms are laid out that I particularly criticise,” declared he. “The whole thing is a jumble. Now, I have no doubt but that a man so inoculated with the poison of commercial life as Farbush would have his home office in the most conspicuous room in the house.”
“Oh, but he hasn’t, I assure you,” the other hastened to say. “His apartment for the transaction of his own private affairs is just at the head of the first flight of stairs—a large room, but quite out of the way.”
“Well, I should have thought differently,” replied Kenyon, grudgingly.
After a little more talk, largely upon the part of the wine agent, that person arose.