To make the acquaintance of the ex-schoolmaster appeared to be exactly what the energetic Mr. Todd was seeking. He put up at the Eagle, where he made a point of asking for a six o’clock dinner.
“I am told,” he said to Sutton, the proprietor, “that this is one of the few properly managed hotels in this part of the country, with evening dinners, breakfasts _à la carte_, and so forth!”
Sutton silently shook his heavy body, his wide mouth turning up at the comers, an exercise which passed with him as a laugh.
“Oh, yes,” he said, “we’re stylish an’ up t’ date all right, when it comes t’ ’leven o’clock breakfasts an’ six o’clock dinners. We’ve kind of changed our day around here t’ ’commodate our patrons. We calc’late t’ please.”
And so it came about that young Whitcomb sat down to dinner that night with Mr. Albert Todd. The latter individual was quite the gentleman in his manners at table, David observed. Little by little the two fell into friendly conversation, and David, at first irritable and silent, passed all at once into his alternating mood, when he desired nothing so much as to talk about himself. He had found few he cared to talk to in Barford, except Barbara, and there were things one could not mention to a woman.
Not once did the tactful Mr. Todd allude to the subject of life insurance, and he appeared wonderfully interested in David’s account of his life in the West; of his failures, few and far between, and of his successes, social and otherwise which, according to David, had been many and remarkable. Mr. Todd was a man of the world, that much was clear, with no foolish or fanatical prejudices. After dinner the two in a state of post-prandial amity strolled across to the barroom, where they partook of various cooling drinks, compounded, under David’s direction, by the alert young person behind the bar. And when later they strolled out to the piazza and David produced cigarettes, they had fallen into relations of such exceeding friendliness that David reopened the conversation in a more intimate tone than he had yet taken.
“This is the most confoundedly stupid hole a man ever dropped into,” he observed through the fragrant smoke wreaths.
“It looks kind of peaceful and soothing,” agreed Mr. Todd, with a chuckle; “I guess I can stand it for a few days, though.”