Half-past six struck, and the quarter. Their fears were renewed when, just upon seven, a figure strangely but neatly clothed was shown into the room, by a servant who displayed such an exact proportion between censure and respect as would have puzzled the most wearisome of modern dramatists to depict.[4] It was Demaine! His clothes were indeed extraordinary. You could not say they fitted, and you could not say they did not fit. The trousers and the coat and the waistcoat were made of one cloth, a quiet yellow. The lines of the shoulders, the arms, the legs, the very stomach, were right lines: they were lines proceeding from point to point; they were lines taking the shortest route from point to point. They were straight: they were plumb straight. The creases upon the trousers were not those adumbrations of creases which the most vulgar of the smart permit to hint at the newness of their raiment: they were solid ridges resembling the roofs of new barns or the keels of racing ships. The lapels of the coat did not sit well upon it; rather they were glued to it. The waistcoat did not fit, it stuck. And above this strange accoutrement shone, with more fitness than Edward and Dolly could have imagined, the simple face of George Mulross Demaine. His hair--oh horror!--was oiled; one might have sworn that his face was oiled as well. The colour of his skin resembled cedarwood save on the nose, where it resembled old oak. If ever a man was fit, that man was George Mulross, but if ever a man was changed, George Mulross was also that man. “Sit down,” said the Prime Minister delightedly. “Oh my dear George, sit down!” “I can’t,” said George, using that phrase perhaps for the twentieth time during the last forty-eight hours. “They’re ready-made,” he explained, blushing (as Homer beautifully puts it of Andromache) through his tan. “I didn’t sit down in the train and I didn’t sit down in the cab.” “Where have you been, George?” asked the Prime Minister. “I’ve had an adventure,” said George modestly. “But hang it all, where have you _been_?” “I’ve been to sea,” said George. “Oh-h-h-h-h-h!” said the Prime Minister. “Beastly luck, isn’t it?” said George simply. “It’s worse than that,” said Edward grimly. “Why?” asked George with something like fright upon his honest if oleaginous face. “Well, never mind,” said Dolly. “It must have been pretty tough. Were you blown out to sea?”