He looked it over with a wide grin.
“It didn’t go through the war with you, did it?” he inquired, and he chuckled. It was as merry a chuckle as I’ve ever heard, too.
Every second or two his eyes would flicker to Shirley’s, and never did I see her own gaze drop. When she got into her own car, he handed her in with a flourish, then held her hand a little too long, as he stared into her eyes.
“If you—if you aren’t all cluttered up with the well known husband or something, I hope I see more of you, pretty lady,” he said airily.
Shirley didn’t blush so easily, but the man had her on the run. Despite his careful dress and too careful manners, he gave a subtle impression that he was a rough and ready guy at bottom; but one who had a lot of sheer animal power, without much leavening of civilized feeling. And when he stared at you with those green eyes, you forgot, momentarily, that something that I’ve tried to describe; the cold, diamond-hard core within him, I mean, and that the geniality of him was a reflection from the surface.
“Nothing like starting to get the old hooks in right at the start,” he grinned as he got in with us and waved farewell to Shirley. “By the way, Peewee, how’s the old heart been doing lately? Any more of the old dents in it?”
“Nary one,” responded little Penoch. “Well, how’ve you been?”
“Neither here nor there. Not so good lately. Right now, if a house and lot could be bought for a nickel, I couldn’t buy a doorknob; so I decided to let Uncle Samuel take care of me for a while. Heh-heh-heh!”
When he chuckled like that, you thought of him as a jovial, humorous scoundrel. And before that twenty minute ride was over, he’d told Penoch a couple of yarns about himself, and had O’Reilly in hysterics and me laughing like the devil. I noted, likewise, that he slipped into the “I seen” and “I done” manner of speech. Being grammatical was foreign to him, as was his bowing to a woman. All surface polish, poorly done.
He moved into the flight with a careless confidence that was sublime. At the dinner table, under Penoch’s prodding, he talked and talked with agility and abandon. He’d been everywhere and done everything and, as far as I could tell, he’d been a drunkard and a gambler and a Lothario through it all. Whatever business he had afoot rarely interfered with his wassail and debauch.