“Mr. Mackworth has asked me to put you up while you are in town ... because his own house is full at present, otherwise he would accommodate you there ...  I guess we can make shift to entertain you properly.

“Here is the bathroom ... if you don’t mind my saying it, when you throw the toilet seat up, let the water run from the tap over the wash basin ... my mother and sisters!” he trailed off in inaudible, deprecative urge of the proprieties.

Ally was anything but a small-town product.  Suave, socially adroit, an instinctive creature of Good Form....

He came into the room he had given me to stay in.  I looked like a different man, togged out in his clothes.  Ally was surprised that I could wear his shoes ... he had such small feet ...  I informed him proudly that I, too, had small feet....

“No, no, that is not the way to tie a tie ... let me show you ... you must make both ends meet exactly ... there, that’s it!” and he stepped back, a look of satisfaction on his face ... he handed me a pearl stick pin.

“This is a loan, not a gift,” he murmured.

I returned a quick, angry look.

“I don’t want your pin.”

“No offence meant,” he deprecated, “and you must wear it” (for I was putting it aside) “Mr. Mackworth and I both want you to look your best when you meet Miss Martin at dinner to-night"....  I angrily almost decided to take his pin with me when I left, just to fulfill his pre-supposition.

“No, that’s not the place to stick it ... let me show you ... not in the body of the tie, but further down,” and he deftly placed the pin in the right spot.  Then he stepped back like an artist who is proud of having made a good job of bad materials....

“You look almost like a gentleman.”

I was about to lick into Merton and lend him a sample of a few strong objurgations of road and jail, when I saw myself in the glass.  I stood transfixed.  He had not meant to be ironic.  The transformation was startling....

“If you would only keep yourself tidy all the time that way!... it’s easy.”

“Not for me ... everything material that I touch seems to fall apart....  I lose my shirts inexplicably ... my socks ... holes appear overnight in my clothes.  Books are the only things I can keep.  I am always cluttered up with them.”

“Appearances mean everything ... then, if you have the rest, the goods to deliver, there is no place a man might not go nor attain.”

I looked the small town reporter over in surprise.  I studied him closely for the first time.  He belonged to the world, not to Osageville ... the world of fashion, of smartness ... a world I despised.  My world and his would always be like separate planets.  He would consort with people for the mere pleasure of social life with them.  The one thing I did not like about him was his small mouth ... but then I did not like my own mouth ... it was large, sensual, loose and cruel.