ow I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of
that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it
--with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had already
been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would
be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial
sort; so I said:

"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out of
kindness for Jones--because you wouldn't want to offend him.
He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but
he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged
me to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllis
and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from
him--you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing
--and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea
was, a new outfit of clothes for you both--"

"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be.
Consider the vastness of the sum--"

"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment,
and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways,
you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good
form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this man's stuff--and don't
forget to remember to not let on to Jones that you know he had
anything to do with it. You can't think how curiously sensitive
and proud he is. He's a farmer--pretty fairly well-to-do farmer
--and I'm his bailiff; _but_--the imagination of that man! Why,
sometimes when he forgets himself and gets to blowing off, you'd
think he was one of the swells of the earth; and you might listen
to him a hundred years and never take him for a farmer--especially if
he talked agriculture. He _thinks_ he's a Sheol of a farmer; thinks
he's old Grayback from Wayback; but between you and me privately
he don't know as much about farming as he does about running
a kingdom--still, whatever he talks about, you want to drop your
underjaw and listen, the same as if you had never heard such
incredible wisdom in all your life before, and were afraid you
might die before you got enough of it. That will please Jones."

It tickled Marco to the marrow to hear about such an odd character;
but it also prepared him for accidents; and in my experience when
you travel with a king who is letting on to be something else and
can't remember it m