“I’d like ter know what Tubal Cain Sims _will_ say now!” exclaimed Mrs. Sims, pursuing corollaries of the main proposition of triumph. “He ’lows, whenst I make him ennythin’ ter wear, ez he kin sca’cely find his way inter sech shapen gear. An’ whenst in ’em, he ’lows he’ll never git out no mo’, an’ air clad in his grave-clothes--goin’ ’bout workin’ an’ sech--in his grave-clothes! It’s a plumb sin, the way he talks!” Her face clouded for an instant, remembering the ungrateful flouts; then as her gaze returned to her guest, she dimpled anew. “But laws-a-massy!” she cried, “how peart ye do ’pear in them clothes, to be sure! A heap more like sure enough folks than in them comical little pantees ye hev been a-wearin’.” He could not forbear a laugh at her criticism of the spruce knickerbockers; but with the thought of the varying standards of a different status of life the realization of his exile came to him anew, and imbittered the decoction called coffee which Mrs. Sims handed to him, and although his eyes were dry, as he gulped it down, he tasted tears. It was difficult for him to resent any admiration of himself as too redundant, but she could not quit the subject, and pointed out to Tubal Cain Sims, when he entered, the excellence of the fit of the shirt about the shoulders and its flatness in the back; apparently arguing that if this shirt fitted the juggler, it was only Tubal Cain Sims’s rugged temper and finical fancy that _his_ shirt did not fit. The old man’s prominent shoulder-blades were not long destined to be concealed by the worn cloth drawn taut across their recurved arches as he leaned slouchingly forward, and the loose amplitudes over his narrow bent chest might well have been economized for a supplement across the shoulders. It never seemed to occur to either of them that the cloth should be cut to suit the figure, or at all events the bearing, of the wearer. She only tortured her helpless partner with her adherence to a pattern at least fifty years old, and which had fitted him well enough twenty-five years ago; but as seam, gusset, and band burst under the stress of his crookedness and increasing slouch, he considered that the hand of Jane Ann Sims had utterly forgotten its cunning, and talked as if his clothes were a trap requiring a certain diligence of investigation to get into, and from which there was no escape.