So saying I betook myself to the establishment of this sporting tailor in the side street off Regent Street; and there, without much difficulty, I formed the acquaintance of a salesman of suave and urbane manners.  With his assistance I picked out a distinctive, not to say striking, pattern in an effect of plaids.  The goods, he said, were made of the wool of a Scotch sheep in the natural colors.  They must have some pretty fancy-looking sheep in Scotland!

This done, the salesman turned me over to a cutter, who took me to a small room where incompleted garments were hanging all about like the quartered carcasses of animals in a butcher shop.  The cutter was a person who dropped his H’s and then, catching himself, gathered them all up again and put them back in his speech—­in the wrong places.  He surveyed me extensively with a square and a measuring line, meantime taking many notes, and told me to come back on the next day but one.

On the day named and at the hour appointed I was back.  He had the garments ready for me.  As, with an air of pride, he elevated them for my inspection, they seemed commodious—­indeed, voluminous.  I had told him, when making them, to take all the latitude he needed; but it looked now as though he had got it confused in his mind with longitude.  Those breeches appeared to be constructed for cargo rather than speed.

With some internal misgivings I lowered my person into them while he held them in position, and when I had descended as far as I could go without entirely immuring myself, he buttoned the dewdabs at the knees; then he went round behind me and cinched them in abruptly, so that of a sudden they became quite snug at the waistline; the only trouble was that the waistline had moved close up under my armpits, practically eliminating about a foot and a half of me that I had always theretofore regarded as indispensable to the general effect.  Right in the middle of my back, up between my shoulder blades there was a stiff, hard clump of something that bored into my spine uncomfortably.  I could feel it quite plainly—­lumpy and rough.

“Ow’s that, sir?” he cheerily asked me, over my shoulder; but it seemed to me there was a strained, nervous note in his voice.  “A bit of all right—­eh, sir?”

“Well,” I said, standing on tiptoe in an effort to see over the top, “you’ve certainly behaved very generously toward me—­I’ll say that much.  Midships there appears to be about four or five yards of material I do not actually need in my business, being, as it happens, neither a harem favorite nor a professional sackracer.  And they come up so high I’m afraid people will think the gallant coast-guards have got me in a lifebuoy and are bringing me ashore through the surf.”

“You’ll be wanting them a bit loose, sir, you know,” he interjected, still snuggling close behind me.  “All our gentlemen like them loose.”

“Oh, very well,” I said; “perhaps these things are mere details.  However, I would be under deep obligations to you if you’d change ’em from barkentine to schooner rig, and lower away this gaff-topsail which now sticks up under my chin, so that I can luff and come up in the wind without capsizing.  And say, what is that hard lump between my shoulders?”