He took a little pains to be genial (a thing he was certainly not in the habit of doing in that room), in order to dissipate any impression his offended manner might have given, and went home.
It is not often a man estimates at all correctly the effect of his own words and looks; he would need to be a trained actor to do this, and, happily, most men are not their own looking-glasses.

Trenholme thought he had behaved in a surly and stiff manner, and, had the subject been less unpleasant, he would rather have explained at once where and who his brother was.

This was his remembrance of his call at the hotel, but the company there saw it differently.
No sooner had he gone than the facetious man launched his saw-like voice again upon the company.

"He had private information on the subject, _he had_." "There's one sure thing," said a stout, consequential man; "he believes the whole thing, the Principal does." A commercial traveller who was acquainted with the place put in his remark.

"There isn't a man in town that I wouldn't have expected to see gulled sooner." To which a thin, religious man, who, before Trenholme entered, had leaned to the opinion that there were more things in the world than they could understand, now retorted that it was more likely that the last speaker was gulled himself.