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‘Now let’s not have any more talk about aunts. How do
I know you didn’t make up the whole thing? Here you are
a complete stranger with an acquaintance of less than half
an hour, and you come up to me with a cock-and-bull story
about your aunts. How do I know what you have concealed
about you?’
Tommy laughed again, then he said good-naturedly, but
firmly, ‘That’s enough, Carly. Sit down, Dick—how’re you?
How’s Nicole?’
He did not like any man very much nor feel their pres-
ence with much intensity—he was all relaxed for combat;
as a fine athlete playing secondary defense in any sport is
really resting much of the time, while a lesser man only
pretends to rest and is at a continual and self-destroying
nervous tension.
Hannan, not entirely suppressed, moved to an adjoining
piano, and with recurring resentment on his face whenever
he looked at Dick, played chords, from time to time mutter-
ing, ‘Your aunts,’ and, in a dying cadence, ‘I didn’t say aunts
anyhow. I said pants.’
‘Well, how’re you?’ repeated Tommy. ‘You don’t look
so—‘ he fought for a word, ‘—so jaunty as you used to, so
spruce, you know what I mean.’
The remark sounded too much like one of those irritat-
ing accusations of waning vitality and Dick was about to
retort by commenting on the extraordinary suits worn by
Tommy and Prince Chillicheff, suits of a cut and pattern
fantastic enough to have sauntered down Beale Street on a
Sunday—when an explanation was forthcoming.

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