Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it.  The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry.  His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled cockerel.  “A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally.  Which you can take it from me that when I. Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother.  Qvality, my friendts, qvality!  Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un’erstan’ me.”

Colin Whitford was of the West himself.  He had lived its rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the Bird Cage.  He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years before.  The sound of Clay’s drawling voice was like a message from home.  He began to grin in spite of himself.  This man was too good to be true.  It wasn’t possible that anybody could come to the big town and import into it so naively such a genuine touch of the outdoor West.  It was not possible, but it had happened just the same.  Of course Manhattan would soon take the color out of him.  It always did out of everybody.  The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself, that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens.  Whitford had long since become a conformist.  He was willing to bet a hat that this big brown Arizonan would eat out of the city’s hand within a week.  In the meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of taming the wild man took place.  Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay’s admirers.  He was ready to hide him from all the police in New York.

Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he could gloat over it.  He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its still sodden appearance.  He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of mirth.

“Guaranteed not to fade or shrink,” murmured Clay sadly.

He managed to get the coat on with difficulty.  The sleeves reached just below his elbows.

“You look like a lifer from Sing Sing,” pronounced Whitford joyously.  “Get a hair-cut, and you won’t have a chance on earth to fool the police.”

“The color did run and fade some,” admitted Clay.

“Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the Swede got busy with it—­and he let you have it at a sacrifice for fifty-five dollars!” The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of his rapture.  He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the back by his daughter.

“Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me?  I’m goin’ to have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein,” said Clay with mock mournfulness.

“When?” asked Whitford promptly.