“I shall be when I am Lord Gascoyne, but so far I am only plain Israel Rank. No, I won’t call myself plain, for that would indeed be affectation.”
“You’ve been to their house.”
“Once or twice.”
“You’ve dined there.”
“Once only.”
“People of that kind don’t ask a man to dinner unless they look upon him as one of themselves.”
“Except for political motives,” I murmured.
He was too dense to see the point, and persisted.
“An acquaintance like that wants nursing,” he said patronisingly, much as an old hand might have done to a young man just starting in business.
As a matter of fact, he was exactly suggesting what I was doing, but my methods were superior to his, and I should never have thought of describing them with such a lack of taste. His inability to see this was the secret of his non-success with the particular class he was anxious to cultivate.