Well! patience is a virtue. Were it not that the gentle spirit had made my half-starved frame her tabernacle, I should have been a tenant for Bedlam on the succeeding Saturday night, when the rascal Bryan brought himself and his green bag, with a sort of grin, into my parlour, and untying it, shook out before my amazed eyes a dashing pair of—— you shall hear what, presently.
‘They’re a very neat piece of work, Bryan,’ said I, examining them without much interest, thinking they could not possibly be for me; ‘they seem to be well seamed and stitched for aught I know, and I only hope for your sake that they will fit him for whom you have made them.’
‘I hope so too, sur,’ quoth the tailor, smirking complacently. ‘Be plaised to thry them on sur, an’ I’ll engage they’ll fit to the peelin’ ov an ingin.’
‘Pooh, pooh,’ returned I, good humouredly, still in the dark, ‘what use in my trying them on? Indeed, if they had come in my way thirty years ago, and the red rogue in full chase, I wouldn’t say but I’d pop them on, priest or no priest; but now there’s no use in talking about them. Hand me out the velvets, and let me try them on.’
‘The velvets, yer rivirince?’
‘Ay, the velvets, Sir Tailor; and I hope those you bring me now are roomier than the last pair.’
‘Oh, faix, sur,’ cried the fellow, still shaking the unmentioned unmentionables at me, ‘those are roomy enough in all conscience, for I thought as how you wouldn’t like them quite to the skin.’ And there he stood, holding forth his wearables, and expatiating in their praise; and there I stood expecting my velvets—but in vain! I caught up the bag, and turning it inside out, I found I had nothing more to expect—those forbidden ones were for ME!
‘What colour are these in day-light?’ asked I, in that still calm that precedes the tempest.
‘An iligant yellow, sur!’ responded the stitcher with alacrity, his countenance brightening with hope.
‘And thou vile fraction of a man!’ thundered I in full storm, and darting a withering scowl that almost put the little animal into the earth, ‘hast thou no more reverence for thy church than that, to suit thy petty interests, thou wouldst see thy venerable parish priest, of seventy-six, figure in a pair of yellow buckskin breeches, like a huntsman or postilion? Away with them, sirrah, or by the soul of your grandmother in purgatory—where she shall stay those hundred years for your assurance—these same breeches shall case your own diminutive limbs to-morrow, and you placed upon the altar as an exhibition, with Tally-ho! in capitals upon your back. What a beautiful spectacle for the congregation!’