Yet though to Vanderbank he couldn't look young he came near--strikingly and amusingly--looking new: this after a minute appeared mainly perhaps indeed in the perfection of his evening dress and the special smartness of the sleeveless overcoat he had evidently had made to wear with it and might even actually be wearing for the first time.

He had talked to Vanderbank at Mrs.Brookenham's about Beccles and Suffolk; but it was not at Beccles nor anywhere in the county that these ornaments had been designed.

His action had already been, with however little purpose, to present the region to his interlocutor in a favourable light.
Vanderbank, for that matter, had the kind of imagination that likes to PLACE an object, even to the point of losing sight of it in the conditions; he already saw the nice old nook it must have taken to keep a man of intelligence so fresh while suffering him to remain so fine.
The product of Beccles accepted at all events a cigarette--still much as a joke and an adventure--and looked about him as if even more pleased than he expected.

Then he broke, through his double eye-glass, into an exclamation that was like a passing pang of envy and regret.

"You young men, you young men--!" "Well, what about us ?" Vanderbank's tone encouraged the courtesy of the reference.