"Oh, neither do I. I believe he expects to do everything he says. And one can't help liking him even when he doesn't." "He's a good while getting through with her," the first lady said, meaning the unseen lady in the alcove. "She'll be a good while longer getting through with _him_, if he hasn't them ready the next time," the second lady said. But the lady in the alcove issued from it with an impredicable smile, and the tailor came up to the others, and deferred to their wishes with a sort of voiceless respect. He gave the customer a glance of good-fellowship, and said to him, radiantly: "Your things all ready for you, this morning. As soon as I--" "Oh, no hurry," the customer responded. "I won't be a minute," the tailor said, pulling the curtain of the alcove aside, and then there began those sounds of objurgation and expostulation, although the ladies had seemed so amiable before. The customer wondered if they did not all enjoy it; the ladies in their patience under long trial, and the tailor in the pleasure of practising upon it. But perhaps he did believe in the things he promised. He might be so much a genius as to have no grasp of facts; he might have thought that he could actually do what he said. The customer's question on these points found answer when one day the tailor remarked, as it were out of a clear sky, that he had sold his business; sold it to the slippered journeyman who used to come in his shirt-sleeves, with his vest-front full of pins and needles, bringing the basted garments to be tried on the ladies who had been promised them perfectly finished. "He will do your clothes all right," he explained to the customer. "He is a first-rate cutter and fitter; he knows the whole business." "But why--why--" the customer began. "I couldn't stand it. The way them ladies would talk to a person, when you done your best to please them; it's something fierce." "Yes, I know. But I thought you liked it, from the way you always promised them and never kept your word." "And if I hadn't promised them?" the tailor returned with some show of feeling. "They _wanted_ me to promise them--they made me--they wouldn't have gone away without it. Sure. Every one wanted her things before every one. You had got to think of that." "But you had to think of what they would say." "Say? Sometimes I thought they would _hit_ me. One lady said she had a notion to slap me once. It's no way to talk." "But you didn't seem to mind it." "I didn't mind it for a good while. Then I couldn't stand it. So I sold." He shook his head sadly; but the customer had no comfort to offer him. He asked when his clothes would be done, and the tailor told him when, and then they were not. The new proprietor tried them on, but he would not say just when they would be finished. "We have a good deal of work already for some ladies that been disappointed. Now we try a new way. We tell people exactly what we do."