“No, sir.”
“Then it doesn’t annoy you?”
“No, Mr. Jacob—”
“What a blessing is philosophic calm! I’ll take pattern by you and learn not to let it annoy me, either. That’s it ringing now. Let it ring. Are my dinner clothes laid out?”
“Yes, sir. And, beg pardon, sir; I think that’s the doorbell not the’phone. It’ll be Mr. Bentley. I took the liberty of ’phoning him, sir, that you’d be here in time to dress for dinner—”
“His blood be on your head. Let him in, Connor.”
Mr. Herbert Bentley, of Bench & Bentley, a huge, puffy man of fifty, rolled into the room, shook hands warmly with Remsen, went through the usual preliminary queries as to health, recent experience, and time of return, and then attacked the matter in hand.
“How’s your family pride, Jacob?”
“Languid.”
“It’s likely to be stirred up a bit.”