They were both dressed very much alike, in loosely-fitting, fantastically patched coats. Lord RAGGIE was wearing a straw hat, with the crown reticently suggested rather than expressed, which suited his complexion very well, emphasising, as it did, the white weariness of his smooth face, with the bright spot of red that had appeared on each cheek, and the vacant fretfulness of his hollow eyes; he held his head slightly on one side, and seemed very tired. FUSTIAN FLITTERS had adopted the regulation chimney-pot hat, beautiful with the iridescent sheen of decay; he was taller, bulgier, and bulkier than his friend, and allowed his heavy chin to droop languidly forward. Both wore white cotton gloves, broken boots, and rather small magenta cauliflowers in their button-holes. "My dear RAGGIE," said Mr. FLITTERS, in a gently elaborate voice, and with a gracious wave of his plump straw-distended white fingers towards his companion's chair; "you are looking very well this afternoon. You would be perfectly charming in a red wig and a cocked-hat, and a checked ulster with purple and green shadows in the folds. You would wear it beautifully, floating negligently over your shoulders. But you are wonderfully complete as you are!" "That is so true!" acquiesced RAGGIE, with perfect complacency. "I am very beautiful. And you, FUSTIAN, you are so energetically inert. Are you going to blow up to-night? You are so brilliant when you blow up." "I have not decided either way. I never do. It will depend upon how I feel in the bonfire. I let it come if it will. The true _impromptu_ is invariably premeditated." [Illustration: "My dear RAGGIE, you are looking very well this afternoon."] "Isn't that rather self-contradictory?" said RAGGIE, with his pretty quick smile. "Of course it is. Does not consistency solely consist in contradicting oneself? But I suppose I _am a trifle décousu_." "You are. Indeed, we are both what those absurd clothes-dealing Philistines would call 'threadbare'--you and I." "I hope so, most sincerely. There is something so hopelessly middle-class about wearing perfectly new clothes. It always reminds me of that ridiculous Nature, who will persist in putting all her poor little trees into brand-new suits of hideous non-arsenical green every spring. As if withered leaves, or even nudity itself, would not really be infinitely more decent! I detest a coat that is what the world calls a 'fit!'" "Clothes that fit," observed Lord RAGGIE, gravely, "are the natural penalty for possessing that dreadful deformity, a good figure. Only exploded mediocrities like TUPPER and BUNN and SHAKSPEARE ought to have figures." "_Had_ SHAKSPEARE a figure? I thought it was only a bust."