"You bet it does," was his unexpected rejoinder. "I’m not that kind at all. When a fellow’s white with me, he’s white. I’m not going to be ashamed of him. If you ever want any one to hold the sponge for you, Jasper—"
"Go bail for you—do anything. I couldn’t go bail for you on my own, of course; but I could hustle round and get some one to do it. Lydia Blair knows a lot of people—and there’s the doctor. Say, Jasper, I’m your friend, and I’m going to stand by the contract."
The taxi lumbered on again, while I was debating with myself as to what to say next, or whether or not to say anything. One thing was clear, that no matter what fate awaited me I couldn’t have Drinkwater holding the sponge for me, nor could I appear in court, or anywhere else, with a man of his class as my backer.
We were lurching into Broadway when he grasped me suddenly by the arm, to say:
"Look here, Jasper! To show what I think of you I’m going to make you listen to that secret. I—I wasn’t expecting any one to meet me. There’s no one _to_ meet me. Do you get that?"
I said that I got it, but found nothing peculiar in the situation.
"Oh, but there is, though. I’ve got—I’ve got no friends—not so much as a father or a mother. I never did have. I was—I was left in a basket on a door-step—-twenty-three years ago—and brought up in an orphans’ home in Texas. There, you’ve got it straight! I’ve passed you up the one and only dope on Harry Drinkwater, and any guy that’s afraid he can’t be my friend without wearing a dress-suit to breakfast—"
It was so delicate a method of telling me that I was as good as he was that it seemed best to let the subject of our future relations drop. They would settle themselves when I had carried out the plan that had already begun to dawn in me.
Miss Goldie Flowerdew, for that was the name on our note of introduction, was at home, but kept us waiting in a room where I made my first study of a rooming-house. It was another indication of what I had _not_ been in my past life that a rooming-house was new to me.
This particular room must in the ’sixties have been the parlor of some prim and prosperous family. It was long, narrow, dark, with dark carpets, and dark coverings to the chairs. Dark pictures hung on dark walls, and dark _objets d’art_ adorned a terrifying chimneypiece in black marble. Folding-doors shut us off from a back room that was probably darker still; and through the interstices of the shrunken woodwork we could hear a vague rustling.