about.

So you can realize that for a fellow who isn't military, and who wears
nothing nearer to a uniform than a daffodil tennis blazer, the judge's
house is a devil of a house to come to.

I think you remember young Mr. Pupkin, do you not? I have referred to
him several times already as the junior teller in the Exchange Bank. But
if you know Mariposa at all you have often seen him. You have noticed
him, I am sure, going for the bank mail in the morning in an office suit
effect of clinging grey with a gold necktie pin shaped like a riding
whip. You have seen him often enough going down to the lake front after
supper, in tennis things, smoking a cigarette and with a paddle and a
crimson canoe cushion under his arm. You have seen him entering Dean
Drone's church in a top hat and a long frock coat nearly to his feet.
You have seen him, perhaps, playing poker in Peter Glover's room
over the hardware store and trying to look as if he didn't hold three
aces,--in fact, giving absolutely no sign of it beyond the wild flush in
his face and the fact that his hair stands on end.

That kind of reticence is a thing you simply have to learn in banking.
I mean, if you've got to be in a position where you know for a fact
that the Mariposa Packing Company's account is overdrawn by sixty-four
dollars, and yet daren't say anything about it, not even to the
girls that you play tennis with,--I don't say, not a casual hint as a
reference, but not really tell them, not, for instance, bring down the
bank ledger to the tennis court and show them,--you learn a sort of
reticence and self-control that people outside of banking circles never
can attain.

Why, I've known Pupkin at the Fireman's Ball lean against the wall in
his dress suit and talk away to Jim Eliot, the druggist, without giving
the faintest hint or indication that Eliot's note for twenty-seven
dollars had been protested that very morning. Not a hint of it. I don't
say he didn't mention it, in a sort of way, in the supper room, just to
one or two, but I mean there was nothing in the way he leant up against
the wall to suggest it.

But, however, I don't mention that as either for or against Mr. Pupkin.
That sort of thing is merely the A B C of banking, as he himself told
me when explaining why it was that he hesitated to divulge the exact
standing of the Mariposa Carriage Company. Of course, once you get past
the A B C you can learn a lot that is mighty interesting.

So I thin