“You do not seem to belong here.”
“What makes you think that?”
She considered him meditatively. “I suppose it was your clothes, first. You dress differently from the others. More like the men I have known over there.”
“Remnants of past glory,” he assured her lightly. “I have n’t always lived here, you know.”
“Where then? Do you mind my asking?”
“Not a bit. I’ve drifted about doing worthless things for several years. Philadelphia mainly, New York a little. Getting myself mis-educated. You see, I’m something of a failure.”
“You should not say that even in fun. I do not like to hear it.”
“It is n’t in fun. Ask my aged and highly respectable great-aunt, Miss Greer, in Philadelphia, and you’ll learn something to my disadvantage.”
“I shall,” said the girl gravely, “if I ever go back there. Did you live with her?”
“For a time. After my college course she sent me on a year’s tour and then made me take one of those ornamental post-graduate courses that lead into the lily-fingered occupations that are neither professions nor business. She had a fond hope that I’d take to diplomacy.”