I saw that I must take my stand at once.
"You can bring Robson to Verandah Cottage if you like," I said shortly, "but I'm not going to the Berkeley."
"Rubbish," Pepper remarked lightly. "The table's booked. Robson's coming down from Scotland specially, and Campbell will be there too, and George Hastie. Hastie's put off a visit to Norway on purpose. You've got to tell 'em what you told me that Sunday at the Bull and Bush."
"Then if they want to hear that, they'll have to have it from you."
Pepper showed not a trace of impatience. "My dear chap, don't I just wish I could put it as you did!" he flattered me.... "No, no; I've told them all about you, and it's you, not me, they're coming to see.... What's the difficulty?" he asked, with a little scintillation of amusement.
"The difficulty is that if you'd told me this a week ago, I should have stopped it."
"So I thought," he replied dryly.... "Do you know West's, in Bond Street?"
"No."
"Well, you'd better go there to-morrow." Then he patted my arm. "Can't be helped, Jeff. The plunge has to be taken. You won't find 'em snobs. It's the waiters you dress for—I expect that's why you dress like 'em. Good Lord, these chaps have got far too much on their minds to bother about that!... Go to West's and take my card; I'll 'phone 'em. I gave way to you before; if you don't give way to me now, you'll wreck us. I'd have had it at Alfred Place if I could, but I don't want Hastie and Robson there. So you go to West's to-morrow, and remember, a week on Wednesday, at eight."
I did go to West's on the morrow, and my brow grows moist yet when I think of it. It appeared that before West's could dress me they had to undress me, and my wild and half-formed thoughts that I might pass as a bushranger or miner or wealthy and eccentric antipodean vanished. Miners' flannel shirts are not patched as neatly as Evie had patched mine; bushrangers do not wear loose cuffs with gold-washed links at eighteenpence a pair; and the respectful "Sirs" to which my two acolytes treated me made my hands itch dangerously to knock their heads together.... So they ran their fingers over my burning body; and because Pepper had let me in for this, I partly, but only partly, got back at him by ordering an admirable lounge suit also, which, for all I know, he owes for to this day. Then I left that place of torture, almost prepared to think twice of my Ambition if it was going to involve very much of this kind of thing.