“I don’t know, sir. Looked a bit worried, I thought.”

“Oh! I don’t know the fellar. What’s he like? Think he’d care for me in my dressing-gown?”

“I could ask, sir.”

“Yes, ask, and tell him if he wants me in a suit he can’t have me at all.”

Clementine Rendall swung his feet to the floor as the door closed and felt for his slippers. He pulled on the bandanna dressing-gown, lit a cigarette, and combed his hair. As he did so he sang cheerfully a song written to the occasion:

“I don’t know the fellar,

I don’t know the fellar,

I don’t know the fellar,

Or who the hell he is.”

At the conclusion he became aware of the reflection of a stranger in the mirror.