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.
