Then the three Smiths came in.  There was some queer attire in that dining-room, but I think that Mrs Smith won the gold medal for queerness.  All her “colonialness” had come suddenly out.  They evidently hadn’t been very fortunate.  But they didn’t seem to mind much.  They hadn’t thought very highly of the hotel before, and they accepted the fire good-humouredly as one of the necessary drawbacks of a hotel that wasn’t quite up to their Winnipeg form.  Nellie Smith was delightful.  I must say she was delightful, and she looked delightful.  She was wearing a blue-and-red striped petticoat, rather short, and a white jersey, and over that a man’s blue jacket, which fitted her pretty well.  She looked indescribably pert and charming, though the jacket was dirty and stained.

I noticed Ellis staring and staring at that jacket....

I needn’t tell you.  You can see a mile off what had happened.

Ellis said in his casual way: 

“Hello!  Where did you pick up that affair, Miss Smith?” Meaning the jacket.

She said she had picked it up on one of the landings, and that there was a pair of continuations lying in a broken bonnet-box just close to it, and that the continuations were ruined by too much water.

I could feel myself blushing redder and redder.

“In a bonnet-box, eh?” said Master Ellis.

Then he said:  “Would you mind letting me look at the right-hand breast-pocket of that jacket?”

She didn’t mind in the least.  He looked at the strip of white linen that your men’s tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and address and date, and age and weight, and I don’t know what.

He said, “Thank you.”

And she asked him if the jacket was his.

“Yes,” he said, “but I hope you’ll keep it.”

Everybody said what a very curious coincidence!  Ellis avoided my eyes, and I avoided his....  Will you believe me that when we “had it out” afterwards, he and I, that boy was seriously angry.  He suspected me of a plan “to make the best of him” during the stay with the Smiths, and he very strongly objected to being “made the best of.”  His notion apparently was that even his worst was easily good enough for my Colonial friends, although, as he’d have said, they had “simply wiped the floor with him” in the billiard-room.  Anyhow, he was furious.  He actually used the word “unwarrantable,” and it was rather a long word for a mere stripling of a nephew to use to an auntie who was paying all his expenses.  However, he’s a nice enough boy at the bottom, and soon got down off his high horse.  I must tell you that Nellie Smith wore that jacket all day, quite without any concern.  These Colonials don’t really seem to mind what they wear.  At any rate she didn’t.  She was just as much at ease in that jacket as she had been in her gorgeousness the evening before.  And she and Ellis were walking about together all day.  The next day of course we all left.  We couldn’t stay, seeing the state we were in....  Now, don’t you think it’s a very curious story?