"
"The clever people? Much obliged. You set me down as a blockhead, then?"
Newman was sitting sidewise in his chair, with his elbow on the back and
his head leaning on his hand. Without moving he looked a while at his
companion with his dry, guarded, half-inscrutable, and yet altogether
good-natured smile. "Introduce me to your wife!" he said at last.
Tristram bounced about in his chair. "Upon my word, I won't. She doesn't
want any help to turn up her nose at me, nor do you, either!"
"I don't turn up my nose at you, my dear fellow; nor at any one, or
anything. I'm not proud, I assure you I'm not proud. That's why I am
willing to take example by the clever people."
"Well, if I'm not the rose, as they say here, I have lived near it. I
can show you some clever people, too. Do you know General Packard? Do
you know C. P. Hatch? Do you know Miss Kitty Upjohn?"
"I shall be happy to make their acquaintance; I want to cultivate
society."
Tristram seemed restless and suspicious; he eyed his friend askance,
and then, "What are you up to, any way?" he demanded. "Are you going to
write a book?"
Christopher Newman twisted one end of his mustache a while, in silence,
and at last he made answer. "One day, a couple of months ago, something
very curious happened to me. I had come on to New York on some important
business; it was rather a long story--a question of getting ahead of
another party, in a certain particular way, in the stock-market.
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