In these days he was generally in an expansive mood,
and his free hand and good-humor increased his popularity. There were
those who said that there were millions of family money back of Jack, and
that he had recently come in for something handsome.
But this story did not deceive Major Fairfax, whose business it was to
know to a dot the standing of everybody in society, in which he was a
sort of oracle and privileged favorite. No one could tell exactly how
the Major lived; no one knew the rigid economy that he practiced; no one
had ever seen his small dingy chamber in a cheap lodging-house. The name
of Fairfax was as good as a letter of introduction in the metropolis, and
the Major had lived on it for years, on that and a carefully nursed
little income--an habitue of the club, and a methodical cultivator of the
art of dining out. A most agreeable man, and perhaps the wisest man in
his generation in those things about which it would be as well not to
know anything.
Seated one afternoon in his favorite corner for street observation, by
the open window, with the evening paper in his hand, in the attitude of
one expecting the usual five o'clock cocktail, he hailed Jack, who was
just coming down-stairs from a protracted lunch.
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