“When do I pay, then?”
“Oh, in three or four months he sends around a bill. That’s more of a reminder to come in and order your fall outfit than it is anything else. But you can send him a check on account, if you feel like it.”
“A check?” repeated the neophyte blankly. “Must I have a bank account?”
“Safer than a sock, my boy. And just as simple. To-morrow will do for that, when we call on the shirt-makers and the shoe sharps. I’ll put you in my bank; they’ll take you on for five hundred.”
Arrived at Mertoun’s, Banneker unobtrusively but positively developed a taste of his own in the matter of hue and pattern; one, too, which commanded Cressey’s respect. The gilded youth’s judgment tended toward the more pronounced herringbones and homespuns.
“All right for you, who can change seven days in the week; but I’ve got to live with these clothes, day in and day out,” argued Banneker.
To which Cressey deferred, though with a sigh. “You could carry off those sporty things as if they were woven to order for you,” he declared. “You’ve got the figure, the carriage, the—the whatever-the-devil it is, for it.”
Prospectively poorer by something more than four hundred dollars, Banneker emerged from Mertoun’s with his mentor.
“Gotta get home and dress for a rotten dinner,” announced that gentleman cheerfully. “Duck in here with me,” he invited, indicating a sumptuous bar, near the tailor’s, “and get another little kick in the stomach. No? Oh, verrawell. Where are you for?”
“The Public Library.”