"It looks like you were coming out of a tree. What the deuce has happened to you? Are you going out for class beauty? Holy cats! the socks, the socks!"
"The socks, you Reuben, should match the shirt," said Stover, completing his toilet under a diplomatic assumption of persiflage.
"Well, you are a lovely thing," said McCarthy, when the new collar and the selected necktie had transformed Stover. "Lovely! lovely! you should go out and have the girls fondle you."
At this moment Bob Story arrived, as fate would have it, with an invitation to dinner at his home.
"Sis is back with a few charmers from Farmington and they're crazy to meet you."
"Oh, I say," said Stover in sudden alarm. "I'm the limit on the fussing question."
"Yes, he is," said McCarthy maliciously. "Why, they fall down before him and beg him to step on them."
"You shut up," said Stover, with wrath in his eye.
"Why, Bob, look at him, isn't he gotten up just to charm and delight? You'll have to put a fence around him to keep them off."
"In an hour," said Story, making for the door. "Hunter and Hungerford are coming."