To proceed with the digression, to no one is the word more hateful than to the individual to whom it is applied.

Cutty would have blushed at the clerk's thought.
"Perhaps I'd better get the proprietor," was the clerk's suggestion.
"Good idea," Cutty agreed.

"Take my card along with you." This was a Fifth Avenue shop, and Cutty knew there would be a Who's Who or a Bradstreet somewhere about.
In the interim he inspected the case-lined walls.Trombones.

He chuckled.

Lucky that Hawksley's talent didn't extend in this direction.
True, he himself collected drums, but he did not play them.