though one might easily be at fault in attempting to fathom what was his
thought when, during the passage of his right foot through the
corresponding leg of his trousers, he exclaimed commandingly:

"Now, Jocko, for the stirrup cup!"

Jack boots and a faithful squire, probably.

During the long and dreamy session with his neck gear he went back to
the softer _motif_:

"Oh, years so fair; oh, night so rare!
For life is but a golden dream so sweetly."

Then, pausing abruptly to look at his coat, so smoothly folded upon the
bed, he addressed it: "O noblest sample of the tailor's dext'rous art!"

This was too much courtesy, for the coat was "ready-made," and looked
nobler upon the bed than upon its owner. In fact, it was by no means a
dext'rous sample; but evidently Noble believed in it with a high and
satisfying faith; and he repeated his compliment to it as he put it on:

"Come, noblest sample of the tailor's art; I'll don thee!"

During these processes he had been repeatedly summoned to descend to the
family dinner, and finally his mother came lamenting and called up from
the front hall that "everything" was "all getting cold!"

But by this time he was on his way, and though he went back to leave his
hat in his room, unwilling to confide it to the hat-rack below, he
presently made his appearance in the dining-room and took his seat at
the table. This mere sitting, however, appeared to be his whole
conception of dining; he seemed as unaware of his mother's urging food
upon him as if he had been a Noble Dill of waxwork. Several tunes he
lifted a fork and set it down without guiding it to its accustomed
destination. Food was far from his thoughts or desires, and if he really
perceived its presence at all, it appeared to him as something vaguely
ignoble upon the horizon.

But he was able to partake of coffee; drank two cups feverishly, his
hand visibly unsteady; and when his mother pointed out this confirmation
of many prophecies that cigarettes would ruin him, he asked if anybody
had noticed whether or not it was cloudy outdoors. At that his father
looked despondent, for the open windows of the dining-room revealed an
evening of fragrant clarity.

"I see, I see," Noble returned pettishly when the fine state of this
closely adjacent weather was pointed out to him by his old-maid sister.
"It wouldn't be raining, of course. Not on a night like this." He jumped
up. "It's time for me to go."

Mrs. Dill la