d got wind of a customer, with a bewildering lot of ruffles
and handkerchiefs and neckerchiefs, and bows of lawn and lace which (so
he informed us) gentlemen now wore in the place of solitaires. Then came
a hosier and a bootmaker and a hatter; nay, I was forgetting a jeweller
from Temple Bar. And so imposing a front did the captain wear as he
picked this and recommended the other that he got credit for me for all
he chose, and might have had more besides. For himself he ordered merely
a modest street suit of purple, the sword to be thrust through the
pocket, Davenport promising it with mine for the next afternoon. For so
much discredit had been cast upon his taste on the road to London that he
was resolved to remain indoors until he could appear with decency. He
learned quickly, as I have said.

By the time we had done with these matters, which I wished to perdition,
some score of applicants was in waiting for me. And out of them I hired
one who had been valet to the young Lord Rereby, and whose recommendation
was excellent. His name was Banks, his face open and ingenuous, his
stature a little above the ordinary, and his manner respectful. I had
Davenport measure him at once for a suit of the Carvel livery, and bade
him report on the morrow.

All this while, my dears, I was aching to be off to Arlington Street,
but a foolish pride held me back. I had heard so much of the fashion in
which the Manners moved that I feared to bring ridicule upon them in poor
MacMuir's clothes. But presently the desire to see Dolly took such hold
upon me that I set out before dinner, fought my way past the chairmen and
chaisemen at the door, and asked my way of the first civil person I
encountered. 'Twas only a little rise up the steps of St. James's
Street, Arlington Street being but a small pocket of Piccadilly, but it
seemed a dull English mile; and my heart thumped when I reached the
corner, and the houses danced before my eyes. I steadied myself by a
post and looked again. At last, after a thousand leagues of wandering,
I was near her! But how to choose between fifty severe and imposing
mansions? I walked on toward that endless race of affairs and fashion,
Piccadilly, scanning every door, nay, every window, in the hope that I
might behold my lady's face framed therein. Here a chair was set down,
there a chariot or a coach pulled up, and a clocked flunky bowing a lady
in. But no Dorothy. Finally, when I had near made the round of each
s