“And what are Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes?”
“A boon to those whose occupation is sedentary”; Gumbril Junior had already composed his prospectus and his first advertisements: “a comfort to all travellers, civilization’s substitute for steatopygism, indispensable to first-nighters, the concert-goers’ friend, the....”
“Lectulus Dei floridus,” intoned Mr. Porteous.
“Gazophylacium Ecclesiæ,
Cithara benesonans Dei,
Cymbalum jubilationis Christi,
Promptuarium mysteriorum fidei, ora pro nobis.
Your small-clothes sound to me very like one of my old litanies, Theodore.”
“We want scientific descriptions, not litanies,” said Gumbril Senior. “What are Gumbril’s Patent Small-Clothes?”
“Scientifically, then,” said Gumbril Junior, “my Patent Small-Clothes may be described as trousers with a pneumatic seat, inflateable by means of a tube fitted with a valve; the whole constructed of stout seamless red rubber, enclosed between two layers of cloth.”