He was a little ashamed afterward of the resolution it had cost him to do so.  It was not a question of Dryfoos’s physical presence:  that was rather effective than otherwise, and carried a suggestion of moneyed indifference to convention in the gray business suit of provincial cut, and the low, wide-brimmed hat of flexible black felt.  He had a stick with an old-fashioned top of buckhorn worn smooth and bright by the palm of his hand, which had not lost its character in fat, and which had a history of former work in its enlarged knuckles, though it was now as soft as March’s, and must once have been small even for a man of Mr. Dryfoos’s stature; he was below the average size.  But what struck March was the fact that Dryfoos seemed furtively conscious of being a country person, and of being aware that in their meeting he was to be tried by other tests than those which would have availed him as a shrewd speculator.  He evidently had some curiosity about March, as the first of his kind whom he bad encountered; some such curiosity as the country school trustee feels and tries to hide in the presence of the new schoolmaster.  But the whole affair was, of course, on a higher plane; on one side Dryfoos was much more a man of the world than March was, and he probably divined this at once, and rested himself upon the fact in a measure.  It seemed to be his preference that his son should introduce them, for he came upstairs with Conrad, and they had fairly made acquaintance before Fulkerson joined them.

Conrad offered to leave them at once, but his father made him stay.  “I reckon Mr. March and I haven’t got anything so private to talk about that we want to keep it from the other partners.  Well, Mr. March, are you getting used to New York yet?  It takes a little time.”

“Oh yes.  But not so much time as most places.  Everybody belongs more or less in New York; nobody has to belong here altogether.”

“Yes, that is so.  You can try it, and go away if you don’t like it a good deal easier than you could from a smaller place.  Wouldn’t make so much talk, would it?” He glanced at March with a jocose light in his shrewd eyes.  “That is the way I feel about it all the time:  just visiting.  Now, it wouldn’t be that way in Boston, I reckon?”

“You couldn’t keep on visiting there your whole life,” said March.

Dryfoos laughed, showing his lower teeth in a way that was at once simple and fierce.  “Mr. Fulkerson didn’t hardly know as he could get you to leave.  I suppose you got used to it there.  I never been in your city.”

“I had got used to it; but it was hardly my city, except by marriage.  My wife’s a Bostonian.”

“She’s been a little homesick here, then,” said Dryfoos, with a smile of the same quality as his laugh.

“Less than I expected,” said March.  “Of course, she was very much attached to our old home.”

“I guess my wife won’t ever get used to New York,” said Dryfoos, and he drew in his lower lip with a sharp sigh.  “But my girls like it; they’re young.  You never been out our way yet, Mr. March?  Out West?”