"The note of the home for which Mrs. Newsome
wants him--the home of the business. Jim stands, with his little
legs apart, at the door of THAT tent; and Jim is, frankly speaking,
extremely awful."
Maria stared. "And you in, you poor thing, for your evening with
him?"
"Oh he's all right for ME!" Strether laughed. "Any one's good
enough for ME. But Sarah shouldn't, all the same, have brought him.
She doesn't appreciate him."
His friend was amused with this statement of it. "Doesn't know, you
mean, how bad he is?"
Strether shook his head with decision. "Not really."
She wondered. "Then doesn't Mrs. Newsome?"
It made him frankly do the same. "Well, no--since you ask me."
Maria rubbed it in. "Not really either?"
"Not at all. She rates him rather high." With which indeed,
immediately, he took himself up. "Well, he IS good too, in his way.
It depends on what you want him for."
Miss Gostrey, however, wouldn't let it depend on anything--wouldn't
have it, and wouldn't want him, at any price. "It suits my book,"
she said, "that he should be impossible; and it suits it still
better," she more imaginatively added, "that Mrs. Newsome doesn't
know he is."
Strether, in consequence, had to take it from her, but he fell back
on something else.
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