six or eight months' stay in England. When he returned that night
to Brackenhurst with two large trunks, full of underclothing and so
forth, he had to come round once more to the Monteiths, as Philip
anticipated, to bring back the Gladstone bag and the brown
portmanteau. He did it with so much graceful and gracious courtesy,
and such manly gratitude for the favour done him, that he left still
more deeply than ever on Frida's mind the impression of a gentleman.
He had found out all the right shops to go to in London, he said;
and he had ordered everything necessary to social salvation at the
very best tailor's, so strictly in accordance with Philip's
instructions that he thought he should now transgress no more the
sumptuary rules in that matter made and established, as long as he
remained in this realm of England. He had commanded a black cut-away
coat, suitable for Sunday morning; and a curious garment called a
frock-coat, buttoned tight over the chest, to be worn in the
afternoon, especially in London; and a still quainter coat, made of
shiny broadcloth, with strange tails behind, which was considered
"respectable," after seven P.M., for a certain restricted class of
citizens--those who paid a particular impost known as income-tax, as
far as he could gather from what the tailor told him: though the
classes who really did any good in the state, the working men and so
forth, seemed exempted by general consent from wearing it. Their
dress, indeed, he observed, was, strange to say, the least cared for
and evidently the least costly of anybody's.

He admired the Monteith children so unaffectedly, too, telling them
how pretty and how sweet-mannered they were to their very faces,
that he quite won Frida's heart; though Robert did not like it.
Robert had evidently some deep-seated superstition about the
matter; for he sent Maimie, the eldest girl, out of the room at