“Yes, sir.”
“Place your back against this gentleman’s if you please—touching, touching! Don’t wriggle away like that. Keep your heels to the ground while I fetch a sheet of notepaper. Don’t move your heads either of you. I thought so. You’re pretty much the same height. Mr. Ferdinand, you will lay out a white shirt and one of your black dress suits in my dressing-room at once. Madame, I regret that we must leave you for a few moments. Will you rest here? Allow me to place a cushion for your head. And here is Juvenal in the original.”
So saying, the Prophet hurried Mr. Sagittarius from the room, driving Mr. Ferdinand, in a condition of elephantine horror, before him, and abandoning Madame to an acquaintance with the classics that she had certainly never achieved in the society of the renowned Dr. Carter.
CHAPTER XVII
MALKIEL THE SECOND IS MISTAKEN FOR A RATCATCHER
“If you tremble like that, of course it must look too big!” exclaimed the Prophet to Mr. Sagittarius, a quarter of an hour later. “Draw it in at the back.”
Mr. Sagittarius, with shaking hands, drew in the waistcoat of Mr. Ferdinand, which hung in folds around his thin and agitated figure.
“That’s better,” said the Prophet. “They won’t notice anything odd. But you’ve turned up your—Mr. Ferdinand’s trousers!”
“They’re too long, sir. You braced them too low for—”