e she would not have a thing to
put on. Then he would become very grave, and his soft tenor would
deepen to a bass of unimpeachable veracity, and he would say, "Sure,
lady, you have it."

The lady would depart still doubting and slightly sighing, and he
would turn to the customer who was waiting to have a button sewed on,
or something like that, and ask him softly what it was he could do for
him. If the customer offered him his appreciation of the case in hand,
he would let his head droop lower, and in a yet deeper bass deplore
the doubt of the ladies as an idiosyncrasy of their sex. He would make
the customer feel that he was a favorite customer whose rights to a
perfect fidelity of word and deed must by no means be tampered with,
and he would have the button sewed on or the rip sewed up at once, and
refuse to charge anything, while the customer waited in his
shirt-sleeves in the small, stuffy shop opening directly from the
street. When he tolerantly discussed the peculiarities of ladies as a
sex, he would endure to be laughed at, "for sufferance was the badge
of all his tribe," and possibly he rather liked it.

The favorite customer enjoyed being there when some lady came back on
the appointed Wednesday or Saturday, and the tailor came soothingly
forward and showed her into the curtained alcove where she was to try
on the garments, and then called into the inner shop for them. The
shirt-sleeved journeyman, with his unbuttoned waistcoat-front all
pins and threaded needles, would appear in his slippers with the
things barely basted together, and the tailor would take them, with an
airy courage, as if they were perfectly finished, and go in behind the
curtain where the lady was waiting in a dishabille which the favorite
customer, out of reverence for the sex, forbore to picture to himself.
Then sounds of volcanic fury would issue from the alcove. "Now, Mr.
Morrison, you have lied to me again, deliberately _lied_. Didn't I
tell you I _must_ have the things perfectly ready to-day? You see
yourself that it will be another week before I can have my things."

"A week? Oh, madam! But I assure you--"

"Don't talk to me any more! It's the last time I shall ever come to
you, but I suppose I can't take the work away from you as it is.
_When_ shall I have it?"

"To-morrow. Yes, to-morrow noon. Sure!"

"Now you know you are always out at noon. I should think you would be
ashamed."

"If it hadn't been for sickness in the fam