The explanation was not satisfactory; so Phil completed the trip in gloomy silence, and he felt a sense of great relief when he reached Sol Mantring’s sloop and made his way into the little cabin, where, of the three men lying at ease, no one took the pains to intimate that Phil was anything but city-born and city-bred. CHAPTER VI. RECONSTRUCTION. Phil devoted part of the next day to studying well-dressed business-men in the streets. Thanks to well-trained perceptive faculties, and also to some large mirrors which he accidentally encountered, he soon learned why his attire had attracted attention. Then he compared clothing-stores for an hour, finally entered one and asked how long it would take to make a well-fitting every-day suit. The salesman looked him over, and replied,-- “Fit you at once, from our ready-made stock. Never any trouble to fit a good figure.” Phil could have hugged that salesman. Here, at least, was some one who did not intimate that he was from the country; and yet, perhaps, a good figure was a country product. He would think about this, as soon as business was off his mind. The salesman certainly fitted him to perfection. Phil scarcely recognized himself when asked to look in the glass. “Don’t think you could do better,” said the veteran salesman, surveying Phil from rapidly-changing points of view, “if you were to have yourself melted and poured into a suit. The tone of that goods is rather cold, but you’ve plenty of color. I think, though, to set it off to the best advantage you need to change your black tie for a scarf with a touch of red or yellow in it: if you don’t happen to have one, you’ll find a fine assortment in our gents’ furnishing department. Needs a somewhat different style of shirt-collar, too: let some furnishing-goods man cast his eye over your neck. You always wear your hair pretty long, I suppose?--well, it’s a pity it don’t set off a man’s clothes as well as it sometimes does his face.” Phil resolved at once to have his hair cut. Under the guidance of the salesman he had his neck-wear changed; then the old man said,-- “Those low-crowned straight-brimmed hats used to look exactly right with the clothes of that season, but somehow they don’t harmonize with the cut of this year. Hats are cheap, though, and there are two or three good dealers on the other side of the street, a little farther down. Keep this suit on, I suppose? All right, sir: I’ll do up the others. H’m!”--here the old man scrutinized the material of the coat made by Sarah Tweege,--“that’s splendid stuff. Great shame ’twas cut sack-fashion. There isn’t much stuff as good as that in swallow-tails nowadays.” “Couldn’t it--I suppose it couldn’t be made over into a party coat?”