"Why - er - for general sporting occasions," I replied.
"For instance, what occasions?"
"For golfing," I said, "and for riding, you know. And if I should
go West next year they would come in very handy for the shooting."
"To begin with," said my companion, "you do not golf. The only
extensive riding I have ever heard of your doing was on railway
trains. And if these knee breeches you contemplate buying are
anything like the knee breeches I have seen here in London, and
if you should wear them out West among the impulsive Western people,
there would undoubtedly be a good deal of shooting; but I doubt
whether you would enjoy it - they might hit you!"
"Look here!" I said. "Every man in America who wears duck pants
doesn't run a poultry farm. And the presence of a sailor hat in
the summertime does not necessarily imply that the man under it
owns a yacht. I cannot go back home to New York and face other
and older members of the When-I-Was-in-London Club without some
sartorial credentials to show for my trip. I am firmly committed
to this undertaking. Do not seek to dissuade me, I beg of you.
My mind is set on knee breeches and I shan't be happy until I get
them."
So saying I betook myself to the establishment of this sporting
tailor in the side street off Regent Street; and there, without
much difficulty, I formed the acquaintance of a salesman of suave
and urbane manners. With his assistance I picked out a distinctive,
not to say striking, pattern in an effect of plaids. The goods,
he said, were made of the wool of a Scotch sheep in the natural
colors. They must have some pretty fancy-looking sheep in Scotland!
This done, the salesman turned me over to a cutter, who took me
to a small room where incompleted garments were hanging all about
like the quartered carcasses of animals in a butcher shop. The
cutter was a person who dropped his H's and then, catching
himself, gathered them all up again and put them back in his
speech - in the wrong places. He surveyed me extensively with a
square and a measuring line, meantime taking many notes, and told
me to come back on the next day but one.
On the day named and at the hour appointed I was back. He had the
garments ready for me. As, with an air of pride, he elevated them
for my inspection, they seemed commodious - indeed, voluminous. I
had told him, when making them, to take all the latitude he needed;
but it looked now as though he had got it confused in his mind
with longitude.
