"And how did your 'show' go?" she continued. "That's about as much as we
can call the drama in these days."
"That, possibly, didn't go quite so well. I took him to a 'comedy,'--as
they nowadays call their mixture of farce and funniment. 'Comedy'!--I wish
Meredith could have seen it! Well, he laughed a little, here and there,--
obligingly, I might say. But there was no 'chew' in the thing for him,--
nothing to fill his intellectual maw. He's a serious youngster, after all,
--exuberant as he seems. I felt him appraising me as a gay old
irresponsible...."
"'Old'--you are not to use that word. Come, don't say that he--that he
venerated you!"
"Oh, not at all. During the six hours we were together--train, club,
theatre, and train again--he never once called me 'sir'; he never once
employed our clumsy, repellent Anglo-Saxon mode of address, 'mister'; in
fact, he never employed any mode of address at all. He got round it quite
cleverly,--on system, as I soon began to perceive; and not for a moment did
he forget that the system was in operation. He used, straight through, a
sort of generalized manner--I might have been anywhere between twenty and
sixty-five.
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