"No. I intend making a great change in my manner of life. But I can't do it all at once, you know."
"But surely there is nothing so terrible in spending an hour with a neighbour. That would seem to me the very way of all others in which you might break the ice most easily. Do go."
"I can't, for two reasons."
"When a man says he has two reasons, one of them is always insincere. He advances it merely as a blind. The likelihood is that both those he gives are insincere, and that he keeps back the real one. What are your two reasons for not going?" Ray did not say this in bitterness, but in supposed joy. It delighted him beyond measure to see how alert and bright Bramwell's mind had become already after only a few days' contact with the boy. In his inmost heart he had come to believe that his brother-in-law's emancipation from the Cimmerian gloom in which he had dwelt was at hand, and would be complete.
"Which reason would you like to have: my real or invented one? Or would you like both, in order that you may select?" asked Bramwell, with a look of faint amusement.
"Both," said Ray.
"In the first place, Frank can't be left alone."
"I'll stay here and see that he is all right; so that needn't keep you here. Number two?"
"Look at me; am I in visiting trim? and I have no better coat."
"You don't mean to say that you care what kind of a coat you wear. This is grossly absurd--pure imposture. It does not weigh the millionth of a grain in my mind. You care about your coat?"