He was so quiet and confidential, and took such pains to suggest the various articles I should require, that I felt bound to place myself in his hands, and to a certain extent he won my confidence sufficiently to make me ask a few questions, to set myself a little at my ease.
“Don’t often have any one so thin and young as I am to measure for a uniform, do you?” I said.
He looked at me with astonishment—real or assumed.
“Thin as you, sir! Oh, you are nothing to some gentlemen—I mean,” he added hastily, “as to being slender. Why, some officers who come here are little better than schoolboys.”
“But I am thin,” I said.
“Slight, sir,” he said reprovingly—“slight. I should hardly call you thin. You’d look a little thin in evening-dress, but in uniform only slight. You see, we are obliged to pad a little in the chest, and to square the shoulders a little, and, one way and another, sir, when we have finished you, you will be surprised.”
I was. But just then I only coughed, and felt glad that I was not the youngest and thinnest officer the tailor had fitted out. “Oh, by the way,” I said as indifferently as I could, “what about swords?”
I felt proud of my nonchalantly easy way of dealing so familiarly with the arme blanche, as the French call it, in the plural number.
“Oh, we shall supply your sword, sir; everything, if you entrust us with your commands. There are some gentlemen who advise that you should not go to a military tailor, but to a sword-cutler; and, of course, every gentleman has a right to go where he pleases, but if you will trust me, sir, you shall have a proved blade, of which you will be proud.”
“Oh, of course I shall trust you,” I said hurriedly. “But about size. I think I should like, er—a light, rather smaller-sized sword.”