This was a language Delia couldn't translate, though she had
heard it from childhood. He had a great many papers to show Mr. Dosson,
records of the mission of which he had acquitted himself, but Mr. Dosson
pushed them into the drawer of the ormolu table with the remark that he
guessed they were all right. Now, after the fact, he appeared to attach
but little importance to Gaston's achievements--an attitude which Delia
perceived to be slightly disconcerting to their visitor. Delia
understood it: she had an instinctive sense that her father knew a great
deal more than Gaston could tell him even about the work he had
committed to him, and also that there was in such punctual settlements
an eagerness, a literalism, totally foreign to Mr. Dosson's domestic
habits and to which he would even have imputed a certain pettifogging
provinciality--treatable however with dry humour. If Gaston had cooled
off he wanted at least to be able to say that he had rendered them
services in America; but now her father, for the moment at least,
scarcely appeared to think his services worth speaking of: an incident
that left him with more of the responsibility for his cooling. What Mr.
Dosson wanted to know was how everything had struck him over there,
especially the Pickett Building and the parlour-cars and Niagara and the
hotels he had instructed him to go to, giving him an introduction in two
or three cases to the gentleman in charge of the office.
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