“Where would he hail from, would you think?” queried the elder.  “Iowa, maybe?  Or Arkansas?”

“Search me,” answered young Wickert.  “But it was a small-town carpenter built those honest-to-Gawd clothes.  I’d say the corn-belt.”

“Dressed up for the monthly meeting of the Farmers’ Alliance, all but the oil on his hair.  He forgot that,” chuckled the accountant.

“He’s got a fine chance in Nuh Yawk—­of buying a gold brick cheap,” prophesied the worldly Wickert out of the depths of his metropolitan experience.  “Somebody ought to put him onto himself.”

A voice from the darkened window above said, with composure, “That will be all right.  I’ll apply to you for advice.”

“Oh, Gee!” whispered young Wickert, in appeal to his companion.  “How long’s he been there?”

Acute hearing, it appeared, was an attribute of the man above, for he answered at once: 

“Just put my head out for a breath of air when I heard your kind expressions of solicitude.  Why?  Did I miss something that came earlier?”

Mr. Hainer melted unostentatiously into the darkness.  While young Wickert was debating whether his pride would allow him to follow this prudent example, the subject of their over-frank discussion appeared at his elbow.  Evidently he was as light of foot as he was quick of ear.  Meditating briefly upon these physical qualities, young Wickert said, in a deprecatory tone: 

“We didn’t mean to get fresh with you.  It was just talk.”

“Very interesting talk.”

Wickert produced a suspiciously jeweled case.  “Have a cigarette?”

“I have some of my own, thank you.”

“Give you a light?”

The metropolitan worldling struck a match and held it up.  This was on the order of strategy.  He wished to see Banneker’s face.  To his relief it did not look angry or even stern.  Rather, it appeared thoughtful.  Banneker was considering impartially the matter of his apparel.

“What is the matter with my clothes?” he asked.

“Why—­well,” began Wickert, unhappy and fumbling with his ideas; “Oh, they’re all right.”

“For a meeting of the Farmers’ Alliance.”  Banneker was smiling good-naturedly.  “But for the East?”

“Well, if you really want to know,” began Wickert doubtfully.  “If you won’t get sore—­” Banneker nodded his assurance.  “Well, they’re jay.  No style.  No snap.  Respectable, and that lets ’em out.”

“They don’t look as if they were made in New York or for New York?”

Young Mr. Wickert apportioned his voice equitably between a laugh and a snort.  “No:  nor in Hoboken!” he retorted.  “Listen, ’bo,” he added, after a moment’s thought.  “You got to have a smooth shell in Nuh Yawk.  The human eye only sees the surface.  Get me?  And it judges by the surface.”  He smoothed his hands down his dapper trunk with ineffable complacency.  “Thirty-eight dollars, this.  Bernholz Brothers, around on Broadway.  Look it over.  That’s a cut!”