Louis, once his own body-servant, came promptly, in his white jacket.
“This gentleman,” said Grandemont, “will dine with me. Furnish him with bath and clothes. In twenty minutes have him ready and dinner served.”
Louis approached the disreputable guest with the suavity due to a visitor to Charleroi, and spirited him away to inner regions.
Promptly, in twenty minutes, Absalom announced dinner, and, a moment later, the guest was ushered into the dining hall where Grandemont waited, standing, at the head of the table. The attentions of Louis had transformed the stranger into something resembling the polite animal. Clean linen and an old evening suit that had been sent down from town to clothe a waiter had worked a miracle with his exterior. Brush and comb had partially subdued the wild disorder of his hair. Now he might have passed for no more extravagant a thing than one of those poseurs in art and music who affect such oddity of guise. The man’s countenance and demeanour, as he approached the table, exhibited nothing of the awkwardness or confusion to be expected from his Arabian Nights change. He allowed Absalom to seat him at Grandemont’s right hand with the manner of one thus accustomed to be waited upon.
“It grieves me,” said Grandemont, “to be obliged to exchange names with a guest. My own name is Charles.”
“In the mountains,” said the wayfarer, ‘‘they call me Gringo. Along the roads they call me Jack.”
