"You mashed on her too?" inquired John. K. Stuyvesant took his eyes, for the faintest second, from the street ahead. Then he looked back. He had answered. John felt limp, and adored with more fervor. "Didn't mean to offend," he muttered.
They had spent a pleasant afternoon. At least John thought so, the pleasantest, he thought, for ages, but just now he was suffering from a profound shock. K. Stuyvesant had said something that had left John mentally holding on to his solar plexus.
"You say it's an evidence of youth to get drunk?" said John.
"Uh huh," answered K. Stuyvesant in an indifferent tone. "Surest sign in the world that a fellow's about nineteen. You know how it is, a chap wants to get old, be thought old, so he imitates what he thinks is manhood. Like a kid, picking out gilt instead of gold, he picks out a drunk, and thinks it's a man. Look at that motor! Some peach!"
"Yes," agreed John absently. However he hadn't seen the motor. He was hoping with violence that K. Stuyvesant had not heard of his lurid past. For the first time he thought of his "past" without pleasure. Heretofore his "past" had been like a treasured museum. Each piece of fresh wickedness added to it with great pleasure, and the knowledge that its value was greater.
"Everybody goes through that stage," said K. Stuyvesant, quite as if he'd read John's mind. "It's the measles of the pin-feather age. Look here, John, whatcha think of that shaft? Looks kinda heavy to me."
"Hollow, aluminum," said John in a little voice. He was suffering from a complete emotional turn over. It was difficult to contemplate shafts. K. Stuyvesant fingered a frame with interest. "Like to own one," he said, "darned if I wouldn't!"
"Keep yer hands off them machines!" said a loud voice, the owner of which glared on K. Stuyvesant. K. Stuyvesant removed his hands. He also smiled. John was nettled. His great dignity was hurt.
"Why didn't you tell him who you were?" he asked of Stuyvesant with heat.
"Oh, Lord!" said Stuyvesant. "Why should I? The fact that I draw a little more on pay day than the next fellow doesn't give me the divine right to paw all over the works." John was silent. He was again mentally steadying his solar plexus. The afternoon had been full of earthquakes to his small ideas, and reconstruction.