'tis nothing--_such_ hospitality!"

"But it _is_ something; the best a man has, freely given, is always
something, and is as good as a prince can do, and ranks right
along beside it--for even a prince can but do his best. And so
we'll shop around and get up this layout now, and don't you worry
about the expense. I'm one of the worst spendthrifts that ever
was born. Why, do you know, sometimes in a single week I spend
--but never mind about that--you'd never believe it anyway."

And so we went gadding along, dropping in here and there, pricing
things, and gossiping with the shopkeepers about the riot, and now
and then running across pathetic reminders of it, in the persons of
shunned and tearful and houseless remnants of families whose homes
had been taken from them and their parents butchered or hanged.
The raiment of Marco and his wife was of coarse tow-linen and
linsey-woolsey respectively, and resembled township maps, it being
made up pretty exclusively of patches which had been added, township
by township, in the course of five or six years, until hardly a
hand's-breadth of the original garments was surviving and present.
Now I wanted to fit these people out with new suits, on account of
that swell company, and I didn't know just how to get at it
--with delicacy, until at last it struck me that as I had already
been liberal in inventing wordy gratitude for the king, it would
be just the thing to back it up with evidence of a substantial
sort; so I said:

"And Marco, there's another thing which you must permit--out of
kindness for Jones--because you wouldn't want to offend him.
He was very anxious to testify his appreciation in some way, but
he is so diffident he couldn't venture it himself, and so he begged
me to buy some little things and give them to you and Dame Phyllis
and let him pay for them without your ever knowing they came from
him--you know how a delicate person feels about that sort of thing
--and so I said I would, and we would keep mum. Well, his idea
was, a new outfit of clothes for you both--"

"Oh, it is wastefulness! It may not be, brother, it may not be.
Consider the vastness of the sum--"

"Hang the vastness of the sum! Try to keep quiet for a moment,
and see how it would seem; a body can't get in a word edgeways,
you talk so much. You ought to cure that, Marco; it isn't good
form, you know, and it will grow on you if you don't check it.
Yes, we'll step in here now and price this m