"All our gentlemen like them
loose."
"Oh, very well," I said; "perhaps these things are mere details.
However, I would be under deep obligations to you if you'd change
'em from barkentine to schooner rig, and lower away this gaff-topsail
which now sticks up under my chin, so that I can luff and come up
in the wind without capsizing. And say, what is that hard lump
between my shoulders?"
"Nothing at all, sir," he said hastily; and now I knew he was
flurried. "I can fix that, sir - in a jiffy, sir."
"Anyhow, please come round here in front where I can converse more
freely with you on the subject," I said. I was becoming suspicious
that all was not well with me back there where he was lingering.
He came reluctantly, still half-embracing me with one arm.
Petulantly I wrestled my form free, and instantly those breeches
seemed to leap outward in all directions away from me. I grabbed
for them, and barely in time I got a grip on the yawning top hem.
Peering down the cavelike orifice that now confronted me I beheld
two spectral white columns, and recognized them as my own legs.
In the same instant, also, I realized what that hard clump against
my spine was, because when he took his hand away the clump was
gone. He had been standing back there with some eight or nine
inches of superfluous waistband bunched up in his fist.
The situation was embarrassing, and it would have been still more
embarrassing had I elected to go forth wearing my breeches in their
then state, because, to avoid talk, he would have had to go along
too, walking immediately behind me and holding up the slack. And
such a spectacle, with me filling the tonneau and he back behind
on the rumble, would have caused comment undoubtedly.
That pantsmaker was up a stump! He looked reproachfully at me,
chidingly at the breeches and sternly at the tapemeasure - which
he wore draped round his neck like a pet snake - as though he felt
convinced one of us was at fault, but could not be sure which one.
"I'm afraid, sir," he said, "that your figure is changing."
"I guess you're right," I replied with a soft sigh. "As well as
I can judge I'm not as tall as I was day before yesterday by at
least eighteen inches. And I've mislaid my diaphragm somewhere,
haven't I?"
"'Ave them off, please, sir," he said resignedly. "I'll 'ave to
alter them to conform, sir. Come back to-morrow."
I had them off and he altered them to conform, and I went back on
the morrow; in fact I went back so often that after a while I
became really quite attached to the place. I felt almost like a
member of the firm. Between calls from me the cutter worked on
those breeches. He cut them up and he cut them down; he sheared
the back away and shingled the front, and shifted the buttons to
and fro.
Still, even after all this, they were not what I should term an
unqualified success. When I sat down in them they seemed to climb
up on me so high, fore and aft, that I felt as short-waisted as a
crush hat in a state of repose. And the only way I could get my
hands into the hip pockets of those breeches was to take the
breeches off first. As ear muffs they were fair but as hip pockets
they were failures. Finally I told him to send my breeches, just
as they were, to my hotel address - and I paid the bill.
I brought them home with me. On the day after my arrival I took
them to my regular tailor and laid the case before him. I tried
them on for him and asked him to tell me, as man to man, whether
anything could be done to make those garments habitable. He called
his cutter into consultation and they went over me carefully,
meantime uttering those commiserating clucking sounds one tailor
always utters when examining another tailor's handiwork. After
this my tailor took a lump of chalk and charted out a kind of Queen
Rosamond's maze of crossmarks on my breeches and said I might leave
them, and that if surgery could save them he would operate. At
any rate he guaranteed to cut them away sufficiently to admit of
my breast bone coming out into the open once more.
In a week - about - he called me on the telephone and broke the sad
news to me. My English riding pants would never ride me again.
In using the shears he had made a fatal slip and had irreparably
damaged them in an essential location. However, he said I need
not worry, because it might have been worse; from what he had
already cut out of them he had garnered enough material to make
me a neat outing coat, and by scrimping he thought he might get a
waistcoat to match.
I have my English raincoat; it is still in a virgin state so far
as wearing it is concerned. I may yet wear it and I may not. If
I wear it and you meet me on the street - and we are strangers - you
should experience no great difficulty in recognizing me. Just
start in at almost any spot on the outer orbit and walk round and
round as though you were circling a sideshow tent looking for a
chance to crawl under the canvas and see the curiosities for
nothing; and after a while, if you keep on walking as directed,
you will come to a person with a plain but subsantial face, and
that will be me in my new English raincoat.
