nice thing if he'd brought his beauteous suit. I hoped that I might be
able later on to invent some good excuse, something really plausible,
for having brought along with me his newest suit unknown to him. But the
more I reflected the more I couldn't think of anything clever enough.

Then the three Smiths came in. There was some queer attire in that
dining-room, but I think that Mrs Smith won the gold medal for
queerness. All her "colonialness" had come suddenly out. They evidently
hadn't been very fortunate. But they didn't seem to mind much. They
hadn't thought very highly of the hotel before, and they accepted the
fire good-humouredly as one of the necessary drawbacks of a hotel that
wasn't quite up to their Winnipeg form. Nellie Smith was delightful. I
must say she was delightful, and she looked delightful. She was wearing
a blue-and-red striped petticoat, rather short, and a white jersey, and
over that a man's blue jacket, which fitted her pretty well. She looked
indescribably pert and charming, though the jacket was dirty and
stained.

I noticed Ellis staring and staring at that jacket....

I needn't tell you. You can see a mile off what had happened.

Ellis said in his casual way:

"Hello! Where did you pick up that affair, Miss Smith?" Meaning the
jacket.

She said she had picked it up on one of the landings, and that there was
a pair of continuations lying in a broken bonnet-box just close to it,
and that the continuations were ruined by too much water.

I could feel myself blushing redder and redder.

"In a bonnet-box, eh?" said Master Ellis.

Then he said: "Would you mind letting me look at the right-hand
breast-pocket of that jacket?"

She didn't mind in the least. He looked at the strip of white linen that
your men's tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and
address and date, and age and weight, and I don't know what.

He said, "Thank you."

And she asked him if the jacket was his.

"Yes," he said, "but I hope you'll keep it."

Everybody said what a very curious coincidence! Ellis avoided my eyes,
and I avoided his.... Will you believe me that when we "had it out"
afterwards, he and I, that boy was seriously angry. He suspected me of a
plan "to make the best of him" during the stay with the Smiths, and he
very strongly objected to being "made the best of." His notion
apparently was that even his worst was easily good enough for my
Colonial friends, although, as he'd have sai