I couldn't.
It was impossible.
You wouldn't either.
Besides I didn't want to.
No more would you." Strether in short explained it at a stroke.
"You can't make out over here what people do know."
"Then what did you come over for?"
"Well, I suppose exactly to see for myself—without their aid."
"Then what do you want mine for?"
"Oh," Strether laughed, "you're not one of THEM!
I do know what you know."
As, however, this last assertion caused Waymarsh again to look at him hard—such being the latter's doubt of its implications—he felt his justification lame.
Which was still more the case when Waymarsh presently said:
"Look here, Strether.
Quit this."
Our friend smiled with a doubt of his own.
"Do you mean my tone?"
"No—damn your tone.
I mean your nosing round.
Quit the whole job.
Let them stew in their juice.
You're being used for a thing you ain't fit for.
People don't take a fine-tooth comb to groom a horse."
"Am I a fine-tooth comb?" Strether laughed.
"It's something I never called myself!"
"It's what you are, all the same.
You ain't so young as you were, but you've kept your teeth."
He acknowledged his friend's humour.
"Take care I don't get them into YOU!
You'd like them, my friends at home, Waymarsh," he declared; "you'd really particularly like them.
And I know"—it was slightly irrelevant, but he gave it sudden and singular force—"I know they'd like you!"
"Oh don't work them off on ME!" Waymarsh groaned.
Yet Strether still lingered with his hands in his pockets.
"It's really quite as indispensable as I say that Chad should be got back."
"Indispensable to whom?
To you?"
"Yes," Strether presently said.
"Because if you get him you also get Mrs. Newsome?"
Strether faced it.
"Yes."
"And if you don't get him you don't get her?"
It might be merciless, but he continued not to flinch.
"I think it might have some effect on our personal understanding.
Chad's of real importance—or can easily become so if he will—to the business."
"And the business is of real importance to his mother's husband?"
"Well, I naturally want what my future wife wants.
And the thing will be much better if we have our own man in it."
"If you have your own man in it, in other words," Waymarsh said, "you'll marry—you personally—more money.
She's already rich, as I understand you, but she'll be richer still if the business can be made to boom on certain lines that you've laid down."
"I haven't laid them down," Strether promptly returned.