"I suppose I couldn't tell him that owing to my pleading and persuasion you've consented to let him off a cold shower to-day?"
"No, sir."
"It would help," urged Hugo. "It might just sway the issue, as it were."
"Sorry. He must have his shower. When a man's been exercising and has got himself into a perfect lather of sweat...."
"Keep it clean," said Hugo coldly. "There is no need to stress the physical side. Oh, very well, then, I suppose I shall have to trust to tact and charm of manner. But I wish to goodness I hadn't got to spring business matters on him on top of what seems to have been a slightly hectic morning."
He shot his cuffs, pulled down his waistcoat, and walked with a resolute step out of the room. He was about to try to get into the ribs of a man who for a lifetime had been saving up to be a miser and who, even apart from this trait in his character, held the subversive view that the less money young men had the better for them. Hugo was a gay optimist, cheerful of soul and a mighty singer in the bath tub, but he could not feel very sanguine. However, the Carmodys were a bulldog breed. He decided to have a pop at it.
II
Theoretically, no doubt, the process of exercising flaccid muscles, opening hermetically sealed pores, and stirring up a liver which had long supposed itself off the active list ought to engender in a man a jolly sprightliness. In practice, however, this is not always so. That Lester Carmody was in no radiant mood was shown at once by the expression on his face as he turned in response to Hugo's yodel from the rear. In spite of all that Healthward Ho had been doing to Mr. Carmody this last ten days, it was plain that he had not yet got that Kruschen feeling.
Nor, at the discovery that a nephew whom he had supposed to be twenty miles away was standing at his elbow, did anything in the nature of sudden joy help to fill him with sweetness and light.