"What is a dress suit?" Jack said simply. "I am ignorant about these matters."
"A dress suit," the foreman said, struck with the young fellow's freedom from all sort of pretence or assumption, "is the dress gentlemen wear of an evening at dinner parties or other gatherings. This is it," and he showed Jack an engraving.
Jack looked at it—he had never seen anyone so attired.
"He looks very affected," he said.
"Oh, that is the fault of the artist," the foreman answered. "Gentlemen look just as natural in these clothes as in any other. They are quite simple, you see—all black, with open vest, white shirt, white tie and gloves, and patent leather boots."
A quiet smile stole over Jack's face. Humour was by no means a strong point in his character, but he was not altogether deficient in it.
"I had better have them," he said; "it would look strange, I suppose, not to be dressed so when others are?"
"It would be a little marked in the event of a dinner or evening party," the foreman answered, and so Jack gave the order.
It was two weeks later before he paid his first visit to Mr. Merton; for the pretty little house which the latter had taken a mile out of the town had been in the hands of the workmen and furnishers, Mr. Merton having drawn on his little capital to decorate and fit up the house, so as to be a pretty home for his daughter.