n very fortunate this year--you would be astonished
to know how I have thriven. I tell you the honest truth when I say
I could squander away as many as a dozen feasts like this and never
care _that_ for the expense!" and I snapped my fingers. I could
see myself rise a foot at a time in Marco's estimation, and when
I fetched out those last words I was become a very tower for style
and altitude. "So you see, you must let me have my way. You
can't contribute a cent to this orgy, that's _settled_."

"It's grand and good of you--"

"No, it isn't. You've opened your house to Jones and me in the
most generous way; Jones was remarking upon it to-day, just before
you came back from the village; for although he wouldn't be likely
to say such a thing to you--because Jones isn't a talker, and is
diffident in society--he has a good heart and a grateful, and
knows how to appreciate it when he is well treated; yes, you and
your wife have been very hospitable toward us--"

"Ah, brother, 'tis nothing--_such_ hospitality!"

"But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is always
something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right
along beside it--for even a prince can but do his best. And so
we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry
about the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend
--but never mind about that--you'd never believe it anyway."

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing
things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now
and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes
had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged.
The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and
linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being
made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township
by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a
hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present.
Now 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 substantia