Well, all right; I never resent a friendly interest. He sat in a less-easy
chair and blew his smoke-rings and wondered if I had been a small-town boy.
'I'm one, too,' he said; '--at least Churchton, forty years--at least
Churchton, thirty years ago, was not all it is to-day. It has always had
its own special tone, of course; but in my young--in my younger days it was
just a large country village. Fewer of us went into town to make money, or
to spend it.'...
"And then he asked me to go into town, one evening soon, and help him spend
some. He suggested it rather shyly; _a tatons_, I will say--though
French is not my business. He offered a dinner at a restaurant, and the
theatre afterwards. Did I accept? Indeed I did. Think, Arthur! after all
the movies and restaurants round the elms and the fountain (tho' you don't
know them yet)! I will say, too, that his cigarettes were rather better
than my own....
"I suppose he is fully fifty; but he has his young days, I can see.
Certainly his age doesn't obtrude,--doesn't bother me at all, though he
sometimes seems conscious of it himself. He wears eye-glasses part of the
time,--for dignity, I presume.
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