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“H’llo, folks,” he chirruped, smiling with an automatic ease at the Felmans. Then he noticed Carl and looked at him with polite surprise.

The father and mother regarded each other with a despondent indecision, dreading the thought of introducing their drolly disreputable son to this shining symbol of an outside world and hating the undeserved appearance of inferiority which had been thrown upon them. This queer son had cast his shadow upon their assured and humbly conservative position in life—in a world of decently balanced regularities. Their ability at loquacious pretense took up the burden with a weary precision.

“This is my son Carl,” said Mr. Felman, with a prodigiously uneasy grin tickling the roundness of his face. “Carl, this is Al Levy. You’ve heard us talking of him, Al. He’s just come back from the army—surprised his old parents, you know.”

“Glad to meet you, I’m sure,” said Levy, with an expert affability beneath which he exercised his disdain for Carl’s patched-up appearance and his inkling of the actual situation.