BUMSTEAD. Bowing
to these three, who, like himself, seem to find real luxury in open-air
strolling on a bitter night in midwinter, he notices that his model, the
Ritual Rector, is wearing a new hat, like Cardinal's, only black, and is
immediately lost in wondering where he can obtain one like it short of
Rome.
"You look so much like an author, Mr. BUMSTEAD, in having no overcoat,
wearing your paper collar upside down, and carrying a pen behind your
ear," Father DEAN is saying, "that I can almost fancy you are about to
write a book about us. Well, Bumsteadville is just the place to furnish
a nice, dry, inoffensive domestic novel in the sedative vein."
After two or three ineffectual efforts to seize the end of it, which he
seems to think is an inch or two higher than its actual position, Mr.
BUMSTEAD finally withdraws from between his right ear and head a long
and neatly cut hollow straw.
"This is not a pen, Holy Father," he answers, after a momentary glance
of majestic severity at Mr. SMYTHE, who has laughed. "It is only a
simple instrument which I use, as a species of syphon, in certain
chemical experiments with sliced tropical fruit and glass-ware.
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