assured her was unusually clever, but Dorothy was compelled to obey the Loamford house rule: All young men must spend at least one evening at 137 West 88th Street before they were privileged to take Dorothy to places less directly under the supervision of Mrs. Loamford. He wore a soft shirt—a bit of costuming which signified either a Socialist turn of mind or a savor of impropriety, or most likely both. His features were regular without having any distinction, except that enigmatic smile on the corner of his mouth which belied the frankness of his full lips. His hair was inclined to be curly, but there was no charm about its curliness and Tommy’s trick of passing his hand through it whenever he grew discursive wrecked the part. Neatness, which Mrs. Loamford admired so much, was absent. Arnold Deering always was shaved so cleanly that he looked like a walking advertisement for a barber; Tommy always had the appearance of having shaved hastily that morning and at the same time not being sufficiently bearded to warrant another passage with the razor. He smoked popular-priced cigarettes from their original package and offered them to Dorothy and Mrs. Loamford—a mark of careless breeding, if nothing worse.
The Loamford system demanded that the young man make conversation. If his family were known to Mrs. Loamford, the customary inquiries concerning the physical well-being of mother and father usually served to start an evening of talk. Otherwise, the social explorer was compelled to blaze his own trail, starting at the standard sign-post which was “And what, if I may ask, is your line of business, Mr.-?"
Tommy, having confessed that he wrote newspaper articles and having elicited the comment that such work must be very interesting because one meets so many
[27]
