These trousers, it is
just as well to state, had arrived months before from Poole, along with
a suit of Rutter's and the colonel had forwarded a draft for the
whole amount without examining the contents, until Alec had called his
attention to the absurd width of the legs--and the ridiculous spread of
the seat. My Lord of Moorlands, after the scene in the Temple Mansion,
dared not send them in to St. George, and they had accordingly lain ever
since on top of his wardrobe with Alec as chief of the Moth Department.
St. George, on his arrival, found them folded carefully and placed on
a chair--Todd chief valet. Whereupon there had been a good-natured row
when our man of fashion appeared at breakfast rigged out in all his
finery, everybody clapping their hands and saying how handsome he
looked--St. George in reply denouncing Talbot as a brigand of a Brummel
who had stolen his clothes, tried to wear them, and then when out of
fashion thrown them back on his hands.

All these, and a thousand other delightful things, it would, I say, be
eminently worth while to dilate upon--(including a series of whoops and
hand-springs which Todd threw against the rear wall of the big kitchen
five seconds after Alec had told him of the discomfiture of "dat
red-haided gemman," and of Marse Harry's good fortune)--were it not that
certain mysterious happenings are taking place inside and out of the
Temple house in Kennedy Square--happenings exciting universal comment,
and of such transcendent importance that the Scribe is compelled, much
against his will--for the present installment is entirely too short--to
confine their telling to a special chapter.

CHAPTER XXXII

For some time back, then be it said, various strollers unfamiliar with
the neighbors or the neighborhood of Kennedy Square, poor benighted folk
who knew nothing of the events set down in the preceding chapters, had
nodded knowingly to each other or shaken their pates deprecatingly over
the passing of "another old landmark."

Some of these had gone so far as to say that the cause could be found in
the fact that Lawyer Temple had run through what little money his father
and grandmother had left him; additional wise-acres were of the opinion
that some out-of-town folks had bought the place and were trying to prop
it up so it wouldn't tumble into the street, while one, more facetious
than the others, had claimed that it was no wonder it was falling down,
since the only new