" she
enquired soft-voiced.

"I have learned you can milk a cow and felicitate you----"

"Of course she told you how I wore breeches, sir?"

The Major gasped, and stood before her blushing and mute; perceiving
which, she laughed:

"Indeed, they become me vastly well!" she murmured, and sank before him
in the stateliest of curtseys. "Au revoir, my dear Major Jack!" she
laughed and giving her hand to an attendant adorer, moved away down the
drive with all the gracious dignity of a young goddess.

Long after the gay company had vanished from sight Major d'Arcy stood
there, head bowed, hands deep-plunged in coat pockets and with the
flush still burning upon his bronzed cheek.

CHAPTER XII

THE VISCOUNT DISCOURSES ON SARTORIAL ART

Viscount Merivale sighed ecstatic.

"Beautiful!" he murmured. "O beautiful, nunky! Here we have
perfection of fit, excellence of style, harmony of colour and
graciousness of line!"

"Colour," reflected the Major, "is't not a little fevered, Tom, a
little--hectic as 'twere?"

"Hectic--O impiety! You are a sentient rhapsody, a breathing poem,
sir, blister me!"

The Major regarded his reflection in the mirror dubious and askance;
his plum-coloured, gold-braided coat, his gorgeous embroidered
waistcoat, his clocked stockings and elegant French shoes; his critical
glance roved from flowing new periwig to flashing diamond shoe-buckles
and he blinked.

"I find myself something too dazzling, Tom!"

"Entirely _a la mode_, sir, let me perish!"

"A little too--exotic, Tom!"

"Rat me sir--no, not a particle."

"And I feel uncomfortably stiff in 'em----"

"But, sir, reflect on the joy you confer on the beholder!"

"True, I had forgot that!" said the Major smiling.

"You are a joy to the eye nunky, an inspiration, you are, I vow you
are. If your breeches cramp you, suffer 'em, if your coat gall you,
endure it for the sake o' the world in general--be unselfish, sir.
Look at me--on state occasions my garments pinch me infernally, cause
me pasitive torture, sir, but I endure for the sake of others, sir."

"You are a martyr, Tom."

"Gad love me, sir, 'tis so, a man of fashion must be. So there you
stand as gay a young spark as ever ruffled it----"

"These shoe-buckles, now," mused the Major, "here was an egregious
folly and waste of money----"

"Nay, you could afford 'em, sir, and there's nothing can show your true
man of taste like an elegant foot."

"Still, consideri