“Glad rags” is supposed to buoyantly describe such attire as, by its freshness or elegance of style, is rendered a suitable adornment for festive occasions or loftier leisure moments.  “Glad rags” may mean evening dress, when a young gentleman’s wardrobe can aspire to splendour so marked, but it also applies to one’s best and latest-purchased garb, in contradistinction to the less ornamental habiliments worn every day, and designated as “office clothes.”

G. Selden’s economies had not enabled him to give himself into the hands of a Bond Street tailor, but a careful study of cut and material, as spread before the eye in elegant coloured illustrations in the windows of respectable shops in less ambitious quarters, had resulted in the purchase of a well-made suit of smart English cut.  He had a nice young figure, and looked extremely neat and tremendously new and clean, so much so, indeed, that several persons glanced at him a little admiringly as he was met half way to the corner table by his friends.

“Hello, old chap!  Glad to see you.  What sort of a voyage?  How did you leave the royal family?  Glad to get back?”

They all greeted him at once, shaking hands and slapping him on the back, as they hustled him gleefully back to the corner table and made him sit down.

“Say, garsong,” said Nick Baumgarten to their favourite waiter, who came at once in answer to his summons, “let’s have a porterhouse steak, half the size of this table, and with plenty of mushrooms and potatoes hashed brown.  Here’s Mr. Selden just returned from visiting at Windsor Castle, and if we don’t treat him well, he’ll look down on us.”

G. Selden grinned.  “How have you been getting on, Sam?” he said, nodding cheerfully to the man.  They were old and tried friends.  Sam knew all about the days when a fellow could not come into Shandy’s at all, or must satisfy his strong young hunger with a bowl of soup, or coffee and a roll.  Sam did his best for them in the matter of the size of portions, and they did their good-natured utmost for him in the affair of the pooled tip.

“Been getting on as well as can be expected,” Sam grinned back.  “Hope you had a fine time, Mr. Selden?”

“Fine!  I should smile!  Fine wasn’t in it,” answered Selden.  “But I’m looking forward to a Shandy porterhouse steak, all the same.”

“Did they give you a better one in the Strawnd?” asked Baumgarten, in what he believed to be a correct Cockney accent.

“You bet they didn’t,” said Selden.  “Shandy’s takes a lot of beating.”  That last is English.

The people at the other tables cast involuntary glances at them.  Their eager, hearty young pleasure in the festivity of the occasion was a healthy thing to see.  As they sat round the corner table, they produced the effect of gathering close about G. Selden.  They concentrated their combined attention upon him, Belter and Johnson leaning forward on their folded arms, to watch him as he talked.