“Dress? In what? This is the only suit I’ve got!”
“But of course!” Joel whispered, arching his eyebrows in astounded surprise. “What’s wrong with that?… You can wear a dark coat anywhere—all that I meant was that you could wear white flannels with it.”
“Flannels!” the other said, “I have no flannels, Joel…. This suit is all I’ve got to wear; if I can’t wear this, I can’t go.”
“But of course you can wear it!” Joel cried, concealing any surprise he may have felt with the instant impatient agreement of his tone. “It’s perfectly all right—only,” his eyes were thoughtful for a moment, he considered swiftly—“Look here!” he said abruptly, “would you like to wear a pair of mine? I’m not as tall as you are, but perhaps you can make them fit…. And if you can’t,” he said quickly, “it’s perfectly all right—it doesn’t matter in the slightest—it’s only,” and his eyes for an instant had a faintly perturbed expression, “—it’s only that Grandfather belongs to the old school—oh, he’s swell, simply magnificent; you’ll like him the moment you see him—the only reason I dress when going there is that he’s got old-fashioned standards—and he’s so grand—I do everything I can to please him—But come on!” he whispered quickly, “I’ll give you a pair of mine, and you can wear them if they fit—and if they don’t—it doesn’t matter in the slightest.”
They went upstairs then to Joel’s room; he gave his friend a pair of striped flannel trousers, and the other departed dutifully to bathe, put on a clean shirt and collar and the flannel trousers—which proved, indeed, a very tight precarious fit, but which were made to do—and thus correctly garmented, he joined the family and the other guests, and they drove away to Mr. Joel’s house.
The great rambling old house which had been so lovely in the moon-enchantment of the night before was no less beautiful by day. It sat there in the hollow of the hill, embowered in rich green and shaded by the leafy spread of its great maples, with the homely, pure, and casual loveliness that the old houses of New England have.
Old Mr. Joel himself was just as grand and imposing a personality as Joel had indicated. He was, indeed, in Joel’s word, “stupendous”; a figure of leonine magnificence and gallant gentility, who might have stepped forth from a page of Thackeray. He was already past his seventieth year, but his body was still strongly, vigorously set: he was somewhat above the middle height, but his neck and shoulders had a kind
