ch the doors of the clubs and the swell
restaurants. At that, they haven't got anything on some fellows that
don't spend a quarter of the money, but know what's what and don't let
grafters like Mertoun pull their legs," said he. "Say, you seem to know
what you want, all right, all right," he added enviously. "You ain't
goin' to let this little old town bluff you; ay?"

"No. Not for lack of a few clothes. Good-night," replied Banneker,
leaving in young Wickert's mind the impression that he was "a queer
gink," but also, on the whole, "a good guy." For the worldling was only
small, not mean of spirit.

Banneker might have added that one who had once known cities and the
hearts of men from the viewpoint of that modern incarnation of Ulysses,
the hobo, contemptuous and predatory, was little likely to be overawed
by the most teeming and headlong of human ant-heaps. Having joined the
ant-heap, Banneker was shrewdly concerned with the problem of conforming
to the best type of termite discoverable. The gibes of the doorstep
chatterers had not aroused any new ambition; they had merely given point
to a purpose deferred because of other and more immediate pressure.
Already he had received from Camilla Van Arsdale a letter rich in
suggestion, hint, and subtly indicated advice, with this one passage of
frank counsel:

If I were writing, spinster-aunt-wise, to any one else in your position,
I should be tempted to moralize and issue warnings about--well, about
the things of the spirit. But you are equipped, there. Like the
"Master," you will "go your own way with inevitable motion." With the
outer man--that is different. You have never given much thought to that
phase. And you have an asset in your personal appearance. I should not
be telling you this if I thought there were danger of your becoming
vain. But I really think it would be a good investment for you to put
yourself into the hands of a first-class tailor, and follow his advice,
in moderation, of course. Get the sense of being fittingly turned out by
going where there are well-dressed people; to the opera, perhaps, and
the theater occasionally, and, when you can afford it, to a good
restaurant. Unless the world has changed, people will look at you. _But
you must not know it_. Important, this is!... I could, of course, give
you letters of introduction. "_Les morts vont vite_," it is true, and I
am dead to that world, not wholly without the longings of a would-be
_revenant_;