! For, indeed, Jackeymo had been less thrifty of his
apparel--more _profusus sui_--than his master. In the earliest days of
their exile, he preserved the decorous habit of dressing for dinner--it
was a respect due to the Padrone--and that habit had lasted till the two
habits on which it necessarily depended had evinced the first symptoms
of decay; then the evening clothes had been taken into morning wear, in
which hard service they had breathed their last.

The doctor, notwithstanding his general philosophical abstraction from
such household details, had more than once said, rather in pity to
Jackeymo, than with an eye to that respectability which the costume of
the servant reflects on the dignity of the master--"Giacomo, thou
wantest clothes, fit thyself out of mine!"

And Jackeymo had bowed his gratitude, as if the donation had been
accepted; but the fact was that that same fitting-out was easier said
than done. For though, thanks to an existence mainly upon sticklebacks
and minnows--both Jackeymo and Riccabocca had arrived at that state
which the longevity of misers proves to be most healthful to the human
frame, viz., skin and bone--yet, the bones contained in the skin of
Riccabocca all took longitudinal directions; while those in the skin of
Jackeymo spread out latitudinally. And you might as well have made the
bark of a Lombardy poplar serve for the trunk of some dwarfed and
pollarded oak--in whose hollow the Babes of the Wood could have slept at
their ease--as have fitted out Jackeymo from the garb of Riccabocca.
Moreover, if the skill of the tailor could have accomplished that
undertaking, the faithful Jackeymo would never have had the heart to
avail himself of the generosity of his master. He had a sort of
religious sentiment too, about those vestments of the Padrone. The
ancients, we know, when escaping from shipwreck, suspended in the votive
temple the garments in which they had struggled through the wave.
Jackeymo looked on those relics of the past with a kindred superstition.
"This coat the Padrone wore on such an occasion. I remember the very
evening the Padrone last put on those pantaloons!" And coat and
pantaloons were tenderly dusted, and carefully restored to their sacred
rest.

But now, after all, what was to be done? Jackeymo was much too proud to
exhibit his person, to the eyes of the Squire's butler, in habiliments
discreditable to himself and the Padrone. In the midst of his
perplexity, the bel