“Like a coat of paint,” he murmured aloud.

The cowpuncher grinned.  He understood the business that went with selling a suit in some stores.  But it happened that he liked this suit himself.  “How much?” he repeated.

The owner of the store dwelt on the merits of the suit, its style, its durability, the perfect fit.  He covered his subject with artistic thoroughness.  Then, reluctantly, he confided in a whisper the price at which he was going to sacrifice this suit among suits.

“To you, my friendt, I make this garment for only sixty-five dollars.”  He added another secret detail.  “Below wholesale cost.”

A little devil of mirth lit in Lindsay’s eye.  “I’d hate to have you rob yoreself like that.  And me a perfect stranger to you too.”

“Qvality, y’ understan’ me.  Which a man must got to live garments like I done to appreciate such a suit.  All wool.  Every thread of it.  Unshrinkable.  This is a qvality town.  If you want the best it costs a little more, but you got anyhow a suit which a man might be married in without shame, understan’ me.”

The Arizonan backed off in apparent alarm.  “Say, is this a weddin’ garment you’re onload’n’ on me?  Do I have to sashay down a church aisle and promise I do?”

Mr. Bernstein explained that this was not obligatory.  All he meant was that the suit was good enough to be married in, or for that matter to be buried in.

“Or to be born anew in when Billy Sunday comes to town and I hit the sawdust trail,” suggested the purchaser.

Mr. Bernstein caressed it again.  “One swell piece of goods,” he told himself softly, almost with tears in his eyes.

“All wool, you say?” asked Clay, feeling the texture.  He had made up his mind to buy it, though he thought the price a bit stiff.

Mr. Bernstein protested on his honor that there was not a thread of cotton in it.  “Which you could take it from me that when I sell a suit of clothes it is like I am dealing with my own brother,” he added.  “Every garment out of this store takes my personal guarantee.”

Clay tried on the trousers and looked at himself in the glass.  So far as he could tell he looked just like any other New Yorker.

The dealer leaned forward and spoke in a whisper.  Apparently he was ashamed of his softness of heart.  “Fifty-five dollars—­to you.”

“I’ll take it,” the Westerner said.

The clothier called his tailor from the rear of the store to make an adjustment in the trousers.  Meanwhile he deftly removed the tags which told him in cipher that the suit had cost him just eleven dollars and seventy-five cents.

Half an hour later Clay sat on top of a Fifth-Avenue bus which was jerking its way uptown.  His shoes were shined to mirror brightness.  He was garbed in a blue serge suit with a little stripe running through the pattern.  That suit just now was the apple of his eye.  It proved him a New Yorker and not a wild man from the Arizona desert.