still lacked something of the quiet

"Well, if you really want to know," began Wickert doubtfully. "If you won't get sore--" Banneker nodded his assurance. "Well, they're jay. No style. No snap. Respectable, and that lets 'em out." "They don't look as if they were made in New York or for New York?" Young Mr. Wickert apportioned his voice equitably between a laugh and a snort. "No: nor in Hoboken!" he retorted. "Listen, 'bo," he added, after a moment's thought. "You got to have a smooth shell in Nuh Yawk. The human eye only sees the surface. Get me? And it judges by the surface." He smoothed his hands down his dapper trunk with ineffable complacency. "Thirty-eight dollars, this. Bernholz Brothers, around on Broadway. Look it over. That's a cut!" "Is that how they're making them in the East?" doubtfully asked the neophyte, reflecting that the pinched-in snugness of the coat, and the flare effect of the skirts, while unquestionably more impressive than his own box-like garb, still lacked something of the quiet distinction which he recalled in the clothes of Herbert Cressey. The thought of that willing messenger set him to groping for another sartorial name. He hardly heard Wickert say proudly: "If Bernholz's makes 'em that way, you can bet it's up to the split-second of date, and _maybe_ they beat the pistol by a jump. I bluffed for a raise of five dollars, on the strength of this outfit, and got it off the bat. There's the suit paid for in two months and a pair of shoes over." He thrust out a leg, from below the sharp-pressed trouser-line of which protruded a boot trimmed in a sort of bizarre fretwork. "Like me to take you around to Bernholz's?" Banneker shook his head. The name for which he sought had come to him. "Did you ever hear of Mertoun, somewhere on Fifth Avenue?" "Yes. And I've seen Central Park and the Statue of Liberty," railed the other. "Thinkin' of patternizing Mertoun, was you?" "Yes, I'd like to." "Like to! There's a party at the Astorbilt's to-morrow night; you'd _like_ to go to that, wouldn't you? Fat chance!" said the disdainful and seasoned cit. "D'you know what Mertoun would do to you? Set you back a hundred simoleons soon as look at you. And at that you got to have a letter of introduction like gettin' in to see the President of the United States or John D. Rockefeller. Come off, my boy! Bernholz's 'll fix you just as good, all but the label. Better come around to-morrow." "Much obliged, but I'm not buying yet. Where would you say a fellow would have a chance to see the best-dressed men?"