And presently, to my great relief, I beheld a shop above whose crystal window panes was a sign with this inscription:
VAUGHAN
TAILOR & SARTORIAL ARTIST
To The
NOBILITY & GENTRY
In this window was displayed cloth of every kind and colour, together with framed pictures of stiff-limbed young gentlemen in most trying and uncomfortable postures and clad in garments innocent of crease or wrinkle.
Incontinent I lifted the latch and entered the shop to behold a stout young gentleman contorting himself horribly in a vain endeavour to regard the small of his back.
"There!" he gasped. "The breeches! Told you they were too tight—I heard 'em crack—they're too infernal tight, I tell ye!"
"Oh, dear me, impossible, sir!" sighed a pale, long-visaged person, flourishing a tape-measure. "A gent's breeches can't be too tight; the tighter they are the more ton! Indeed, tight breeches, sir, are—What's for you, my lad?" he enquired, catching sight of me.
"I desire to purchase a suit of clothes."
"Oh, dear me—no, no!" sighed the long-visaged person. "Not here, lad, not here! We build garments for gentlemen only, no ready-made goods here; we deal strictly with the nobility and gentry of the county—go away, lad, go away!" Here he flapped his tape-measure at me, the stout gentleman stared at me, and I crept forth into the street again among the dainty, sprigged gowns and high-collared coats amid which I wandered somewhat disconsolate until by chance my wandering gaze lighted upon a small, dingy shop in whose narrow window squatted a small, humpbacked, bespectacled man plying needle and thread with remarkable speed and dexterity. It was a small shop but so stuffed and crammed with garments of all kinds that they had overflowed into the street, for the narrow doorway was draped, choked and festooned with coats, breeches, pantaloons, shirts, waistcoats, stockings, boots, shoes, a riotous and apparently inextricable tangle.
Into this small and stuffy shop I forced myself a passage, whereupon its small, busy proprietor glanced up at me over the rim of his large spectacles.
"Well, son, what d'ye lack?" he demanded.