When he is invited to dinner he buttons it lower down, revealing
as well a bit of his plaited shirt, and when it is a wedding this old
stand-by is thrown wide open discovering a stiff, starched, white
waistcoat with ivory buttons and snowy neck-cloth.
These several make-ups used once to surprise me, and I often found
myself insisting that the looseness and grace with which this garment
flapped about the colonel's thin legs was only possible in a brand-new
coat having all the spring and lightness of youth in its seams. I was
always mistaken. I had only to look at the mis-mated buttons and the
raveled edge of the lining fringing the tails. It was the same coat.
The colonel wore to-night the lower-button style with the white tie.
It was indeed the adjustment of this necessary article which had
consumed the five minutes passed in his dressing-room, slightly
lengthened by the time necessary to trim his cuffs--a little nicety
which he rarely overlooked and which it mortified him to forget.
What a frank, generous, tender-hearted fellow he is: happy as a boy;
hospitable to the verge of beggary; enthusiastic as he is visionary;
simple as he is genuine.
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