His first grievance had been the dilapidated conveyance; his second the fact that Richards, who for reasons of his own had not tried to make the expedition a bed of roses, had insisted on his getting out a dozen times to see certain offices, the shaft house, and a number of other buildings, about whose use he was extremely hazy. And these pilgrimages had necessitated his walking through fine red dust, which not only reduced his immaculate footgear to its lowest terms, but bordered the bottom of his pale gray trouser legs with a deep red band, which Richards assured him was indelible.
But the crowning enormity came with the dinner at Raegan’s Hotel, which invitation Mr. Wade had felt he could hardly refuse in courtesy.
At the moment they entered the dining room Richards was called to the phone.
“Take these gentlemen down to my table, Maggie,” he said to the head waitress as he turned away.
Mr. Wade regarded this young woman disapprovingly. The curve of her pompadour and the curves of her figure were too aggressively spherical. That her overgenerous bulk could be compressed to the dimensions of her waist seemed to indicate that whalebone had been unduly overlooked in modern mechanics. It hinted, too, though not to Mr. Wade, of a forcefulness of spirit which, seeing in a handkerchief-sized, knife-pleated white apron a legitimate adornment, adjusted the physical, Spartan-like, to its requirements. But Mr. Wade’s mere passive and impersonal dislike quickened to an active rage in that awful moment when she tucked her arm comfortably in his, and promenaded him the length of the dining room to an untidy looking table already occupied by a portly Hibernian, who was engaged in extensive molar exploration with a diminutive wooden pick.
“Friends of Mr. Richards, Mr. O’Shaughnessy,” she said, glibly, and Mr. Wade felt himself released from her muscular arm only to feel the front of a chair pressed with energetic purpose against the back of his knees.
As certain muscles automatically relaxed to enable him to be seated, his stunned sense of propriety recovered consciousness enough to enable him to decide that of all outrages ever perpetrated on a gentleman, this last was the worst.
“Mr. Richards’ friends are my friends,” responded Mr. O’Shaughnessy, cordially.
Mr. Wade looked at Hastings, who was seating himself with outer sobriety and inward hilarity. He comforted himself by taking that sobriety for disgust.