"No; do I?" returns Mr. Musgrave, with admirable modesty, regarding himself bashfully though complacently in a full-length mirror. His tall young figure is well drawn up, his head erect; unconsciously he has assumed all the full-blown, starchy airs of a military swell. "Does the coat fit well, do you think?" he asks, turning to await her answer with doubtful anxiety.
"It is simply perfection," returns she reassuringly, "not a wrinkle in it. Certainly you owe your tailor something for turning you out so well."
"I do," says Taffy, feelingly.
"I had no idea it would make such a difference in you," goes on Lilian; "you look quite grown up."
"Grown up,—nonsense," somewhat indignantly; "I should think I was indeed. Just twenty, and six feet one. There are very few fellows in the service as good a height as I am. 'Grown up,' indeed!"
"I beg your pardon," Lilian says, meekly. "Remember I am only a little rustic, hardly aware of what a man really means. Talking of fitting, however, do you know," thoughtfully, and turning her head to one side, the better to mark the effect, "I think—I fancy—there is just a little pucker in your trousers, just at the knee."
"No; is there?" says Taffy, immediately sinking into the deepest melancholy as he again refers to the glass.
Here Sir Guy comes forward and creates a diversion. He is immensely amused, but still sore and angry at Florence's remarks, while wishing Lilian would not place herself in such positions as to lay her open to unkind criticism.
"Oh, here is Sir Guy," says that young lady, quite unembarrassed; "he will decide. Sir Guy, do you think his trousers fit very well? Look here, now, is there not the faintest pucker here?"
"I think they fit uncommonly well," says Guy, gravely. Taffy has turned a warm crimson and is silent; but his confusion arises not from Miss Chesney's presence in his room, but because Chetwoode has discovered him trying on his new clothes like a school-boy.