He had been away so long that few people remembered him, but his last exploit before leaving ensured that in the minds of those few he remained clear and definite. His wife, when she set out to meet him, was accompanied by a Reception Committee of three, and as they waited outside the large building where he had been staying for the last few months (his hosts kept several important establishments in various parts of the country and he had spent part of the time at one, part at others), as they waited, I say, under the avenue of trees well away from the front door—having, as a point of delicacy, no desire to be seen by the servants about the place—they speculated on the probable improvement in his personal appearance. Members of the Committee recalled precedents where So-and-so went away stout and unhealthy on a vacation of similar length, and came back so trim and brown that his own sweetheart would not have known him had she remained in the neighbourhood.
“Here he is!” cried the wife suddenly. “I could tell him, bless ’is heart, in a thousan’.”
“That ain’t him!”
“He’s got a short beard, at any rate,” urged the wife, admitting her error grudgingly as the visitor was claimed and marched off by another lady.
“They all ’ave. Try to use your intelligence, why don’t you!”
“Well,” said the wife, pointing her umbrella at a sharp-eyed man, who, coming out of the large doorway, glanced around suspiciously, “well, at least that’s not my Jim.” The sharp-eyed man came across the open space towards them, still keeping a look-out on either side. “He’s mistaking us for his own people. My Jim’s a better-looking man than him.”
“If you say that again, Meria,” remarked the arriving man in tones that could not be mistaken, “I shall have to— Now then, now then! I don’t want no kissing!”
He was dressed in a suit for which he had not been measured, and his boots were scarcely a precise fit; he shambled along with his friends, responding gruffly to their polite inquiries and complaining bitterly—first, that they should have come to meet him; second, that so many friends were absent. Informed that some of these were no longer alive, he declined to accept this as a sufficient excuse, describing them as a cantankerous lot, ever thoughtless where the feelings of others were concerned. They stopped quite naturally at the first place of refreshment, and he criticised the beverage set before him, declaring that had he known beer could be so bad, he would not have worried his thoughts so much about it during recent years. He was equally dissatisfied with his first pipe of tobacco, which he had some trouble to light, and when he heard that his sister had married a respectable fruiterer, off Bethnal Green Road, he made no attempt to conceal his annoyance with the way the world had been managed during his absence.
“Once I turn my back for a moment—” he said disgustedly. “Who’s got the pub at the corner of our street?”
“I’ve moved, James,” explained his wife apologetically.