What a boy Kitty would have made!  What an infallible eye she had for measuring a person!  No servant-question ever dangled its hot interrogation point before his eyes.  Kitty saw to that.  She was the real manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills.  Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far off as possible.  What would he do without Kitty?  Always ready to perch on his knee, to smooth the day-cares from his forehead, to fend off trouble, to make laughter in the house.  He was not going to love the man who eventually carried her off.  He was always dreading that day; young men about the house, the yacht and the summer home worried him.  The whole lot of them were not worthy to tie the laces of her shoes, much as they might yearn to do so.

And all Webb wanted was a tailor!  He would give a hundred for the right to tell this scare to the boys at the club, but Webb’s ingenuous confidence did not merit betrayal.  Still, nothing should prevent him from telling Kitty, who knew how to keep a secret.  He picked up the newspaper and resumed his computation of averages (batting), chuckling audibly from time to time.  Clothes!

At quarter to six Thomas returned to the house, laden with fat bundles which he hurried secretly to his room.  He had never worn a dress-suit.  He had often guilelessly dreamed of possessing one:  between paragraphs, as another young man might have dreamed of vanquishing a rival.  It was inborn that we should wish to appear well in public; to better one’s condition, or, next best, to make the public believe one has.  Thomas was deeply observant and quickly adaptive.  Between the man who goes to school with books and the man who goes to school in books there is wide difference.  What we are forced to learn seldom lifts us above the ordinary; what we learn by inclination plows our fields and reaps our harvests.  It is as natural as breathing that we should like our tonics, mental as well as physical, sugar-coated.

Thomas had never worn a dress-suit; but in the matter of collars and cravats and shirts he knew the last word.  But why should he wish to wear that mournfully conventional suit in which we are supposed to enjoy ourselves?  She had told him not to bother about dress.  Was it that very nonsense he dreaded, insidiously attacking the redoubts of his common sense?

That evening at dinner Kitty nor her mother appeared to notice the change.  This gratified him; he knew that outwardly there was nothing left to desire or attain.

Kitty began to talk about the romance immediately.  She had found the beginning very exciting; it was out of the usual run of stories; and if it was all as good as the first part, there would be some editors glad to get hold of it.  So much for the confidence of youth. The Black Veil, as I have reason to know, lies at the bottom of Thomas’ ancient trunk.