"Mr. Fendihook is not quite"—I hesitated—"not quite the kind of person, my dear, that we're accustomed to meet."
"I know," said Liosha, "you want them all stamped out in a pattern, like little tin soldiers."
"I see the point of your criticism, and it's true, as far as it goes."
"Oh, go on—" Jaffery interrupted.
"But—" I continued.
"You'd rather not see him again?"
"No," roared Jaffery.
"I'm talking to Hilary, not you," said Liosha. She turned to me. "You and Barbara would like me to take him away right now?"
I still held her hand, which was growing moist—and I suppose mine was too—and I didn't like to drop it, for fear of hurting her feelings. I gave it a great squeeze. It was very difficult for me. Personally, I enjoyed the frank, untrammelled and prodigiously accomplished scion of a vulgar race. As a mere bachelor, isolated human, meeting him, I should have taken him joyously, if not to my heart, at any rate to my microscope and studied him and savoured him and got out of him all that there was of grotesqueness. But to every one of my household, save Susan who did not count, he was—I admit, deservedly—an object of loathing. So I squeezed Liosha's hand.
"The beginning and end of the matter, my dear," said I, "is that he's not quite a gentleman."