ve had
no others for thirty years. It is too late to alter now.

"A serge, yes," continues my tailor, "something in a dark
blue, perhaps." He says it with all the gusto of a new
idea, as if the thought of dark blue had sprung up as an
inspiration. "Mr. Jennings" (this is his assistant),
"kindly take down some of those dark blues.

"Ah," he exclaims, "now here is an excellent thing." His
manner as he says this is such as to suggest that by
sheer good fortune and blind chance he has stumbled upon
a thing among a million.

He lifts one knee and drapes the cloth over it, standing
upon one leg. He knows that in this attitude it is hard
to resist him. Cloth to be appreciated as cloth must be
viewed over the bended knee of a tailor with one leg in
the air.

My tailor can stand in this way indefinitely, on one leg
in a sort of ecstasy, a kind of local paralysis.

"Would that make up well?" I ask him.

"Admirably," he answers.

I have no real reason to doubt it. I have never seen any
reason why cloth should not make up well. But I always
ask the question as I know that he expects it and it
pleases him. There ought to be a fair give and take in
such things.

"You don't think it at all loud?" I say. He always likes
to be asked this.

"Oh, no, very quiet indeed. In fact we always recommend
serge as extremely quiet."

I have never had a wild suit in my life. But it is well
to ask.

Then he measures me--round the chest, nowhere else. All
the other measures were taken years ago. Even the chest
measure is only done--and I know it--to please me. I do
not really grow.

"A _little_ fuller in the chest," my tailor muses. Then
he turns to his assistant. "Mr. Jennings, a little fuller
in the chest--half an inch on to the chest, please."

It is a kind fiction. Growth around the chest is flattering
even to the humblest of us.

"Yes," my tailor goes on--he uses "yes" without any
special meaning--"and shall we say a week from Tuesday?
Mr. Jennings, a week from Tuesday, please."

"And will you please," I say, "send the bill to--?" but
my tailor waves this aside. He does not care to talk
about the bill. It would only give pain to both of us
to speak of it.

The bill is a matter we deal with solely by correspondence,
and that only in a decorous and refined style never
calculated to hurt.

I am sure from the tone of my tailor's letters that he
would never send the bill, or ask for the amount, were
it not that from tim