“Six inches less round the body, as I’m a sinner! Six inches less, Mr. Jericho, and I last took your measure only six weeks ago.” Thus spoke Breeks, the tailor, holding his strip of parchment to the eye of the attenuated Jericho. “I never did know such a shrink.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Jericho with dignity. “I was fast losing my figure, Breeks.”
“Oh dear, no!” said Breeks. “A little stout, to be sure; but noways out of character. Some people’s only made to be stout, and nothing else. And now in six weeks six inches! Why, in a twelvemonth, do you know what that’ll come to? Eh?”
“You will measure me without observation, Mr. Breeks,” said Jericho, “or not measure me at all.”
The Man made of Money shows his want of feeling.
The faintest, briefest “Oh!” rounded the mouth of Breeks, and with tenderest touch he proceeded in his task. It is at least one of the humanising beauties of credit that it begets familiarity. Debt despises the distance of ceremony. Now Breeks had for many years made for Jericho; and Jericho was never above the tailor’s joke. There might be a reason for this. Breeks was never in a hurry to push. His bills were like oak-leaves; new ones always grew under the old. (A pretty thought this; and quite at the service of all tailorhood.)
Breeks took his measures in silence. He knew that Jericho
was become rich, and therefore felt that he, the rich man’s tailor, must become dull and respectful. Ready money was, after all, better than a ready laugh. “Shall I allow anything, sir, for”—and Breeks held the body of Jericho as in a parchment bridle—“anything for stoutness? It may come, sir, when you least expect it?”
“A little, just a little, Breeks. Though I don’t think I’m a bit thinner than—than many people?”