The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished. It was a standard suit. White piping on the v of the vest added a flavor of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots, honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots. The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect with stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a snake-head pin with opal eyes.
A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife, silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was a large, yellowish elk’s-tooth-proclamation of his membership in the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his loose-leaf pocket notebook, that modern and efficient notebook which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription—D.S.S. D.M.Y.P.D.F.
But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him one, so he hadn’t the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases he regarded as effeminate.
Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters’ Club button. With the conciseness of great art the button displayed two words: “Boosters-Pep!” It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated him with Good Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa key.
With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. “I feel kind of punk this morning,” he said. “I think I had too much dinner last evening. You oughtn’t to serve those heavy banana fritters.”
“But you asked me to have some.”
“I know, but—I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to look after his digestion. There’s a lot of fellows that don’t take proper care of themselves. I tell you at forty a man’s a fool or his doctor—I mean, his own doctor. Folks don’t give enough attention to this matter of dieting. Now I think—Course a man ought to have a good meal after the day’s work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we took lighter lunches.”
“But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch.”
“Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating downtown? Yes, sure! You’d have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side—but no, that wouldn’t be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was driving over to Verg Gunch’s, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right here it was—kind of a sharp shooting pain. I—Where’d that dime go to? Why don’t you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple every evening—an apple a day keeps the doctor away—but still, you ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.”
“The last time I had prunes you didn’t eat them.”
“Well, I didn’t feel like eating ’em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think I did eat some of ’em. Anyway—I tell you it’s mighty important to—I was saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don’t take sufficient care of their diges—”
“Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?”
“Why sure; you bet.”
“Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that evening.”
“Rats! The rest of ’em won’t want to dress.”
“Of course they will. You remember when you didn’t dress for the Littlefields’ supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed you were.”
“Embarrassed, hell! I wasn’t embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don’t happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a fellow’s worked like the dickens all day, he doesn’t want to go and hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks that he’s seen in just reg’lar ordinary clothes that same day.”
“You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted you were glad I’d insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn’t say ‘Tux.’ It’s ‘dinner-jacket.’ ”
“Rats, what’s the odds?”
“Well, it’s what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard you calling it a ‘Tux.’ ”
“Well, that’s all right now! Lucile McKelvey can’t pull anything on me! Her
