omplete view, clear out in the hall--he admitted with stirring delight
that he looked "pretty fair in the bloomin' outfit." His clear face, his
shining hair, his straight shoulders, seemed to go with the costume.

He wriggled into his top-coat and marched out of his room,
theater-bound, with the well-fed satisfaction of a man who is certain
that no one is giggling, "Look at the hand-me-downs." His pumps did
alternately pinch his toes and rub his heels; the trousers cramped his
waist; and he suspected that his tie had gone wandering. But he
swaggered to the trolley, and sat as one rich and famous and very kind
to the Common People, till----

Another man in evening clothes got on the car, and Milt saw that he wore
a silk hat, and a white knitted scarf; that he took out and examined a
pair of white kid gloves.

He'd forgotten the hat! He was wearing his gray felt. He could risk the
gloves, but the hat--the "stovepipe"--and the chart had said to wear
one--he was ruined----

He turned up the collar of his top-coat to conceal his white tie, tried
to hide each of his feet behind the other to cover up his pumps; sought
to change his expression from that of a superior person in evening
clothes to that of a decent fellow in honest Regular Clothes. Had the
conductor or any of the passengers realized that he was a dub in a
dress-suit without the hat?

Once he thought that the real person in real evening clothes was looking
at him. He turned his head and bore the probable insult in weak misery.

Too feeble for anything but thick suffering he was dragged on toward the
theater, the opera, people in silk hats--toward Jeff Saxton and
exposure.

But his success in bullying the tailor had taught him that dressing
wasn't really a hidden lore to be known only by initiates; that some day
he too might understand the black and white magic of clothes. His
bruised self-consciousness healed. "I'll do--something," he determined.
He waited, vacuously.

The Gilson party was not in the lobby when he arrived. He tore off his
top-coat. He draped it over his felt hat, so that no one could be sure
what sort of hat it shamefully concealed. That unveiling did expose him
to the stare of everybody waiting in the lobby. He was convinced that
the entire ticket-buying cue was glumly resenting him. Peeping down at
the unusual white glare of his shirt-front, he felt naked and
indecent.... "Nice kind o' vest. Must make 'em out of old pique
collars."

H