“How did it end?”
“The valet mentioned something about wages and assault warrants, so I was given to him to make the matter up. Between you and I, the Cornet was very hard up.”
“Indeed!”
“Certain of it. You remember the French-grey trousers we used to walk out with—those he strapped so tight over the remarkably chatty and pleasant French-polished boots whose broken English we used to admire so much?”
“Of course I do; they were the most charming greys I ever met. They beat the plaids into fits; and the plaids were far from ungentlemanly, only they would always talk with a sham Scotch accent, and quote the ‘Cotter’s Saturday Night.’”
“Certainly that was a drawback. But to return to our friends, and the Cornet’s friends, they must have been bad, for those very greys were seated.”
“Impossible!”
“Fact, I assure you. My tails were pinned over the patch for three weeks.”
“How did they bear it?”
“Shockingly. A general break up of the constitution—went all to pieces. First, decay appeared in the brace buttons; then the straps got out of order. They did say it was owing to the heels of the French-polished boots going down on one side, but the boots would never admit it.”