“Dress-clothes,” pronounced Anne, “are dressy when they shine. If you’ll put studs and a clean shirt in with them, I’ll be obliged, and I’ll send the shirt back washed.” “But, Anne----” protested Tom. “You hold your hush,” she said. “It’s settled. Go on about the fairies, Terry.” Fairies seemed to Anne entirely suitable as a subject of conversation for those children, men. Terry brought the clothes himself and personally assisted at Tom’s transformation from a railway porter into a “swell.” His tie, at any rate, was nicely tied, but “I feel the awkwardest fool alive,” said Tom, as well he might, with clothes which fitted where they touched; Anne, had she confessed her inward sinking, must have admitted that she was in no better case herself, but confession was far from her: she had to be brazen for two. Yet even Anne’s high courage failed her in the ladies’ dressing-room: she emerged so humbled by the splendours which she had seen unveiled that, at a word from Tom, she would have turned tail and fled. But Tom had found countenance. Mr. Travers, meeting him on the stair, had taken charge of him, and now added Anne to his convoy. It was kindly tact increased to the power of heroism: he talked hard and sheltered his waifs from feeling the curious glances which, even in that mixed company, were directed embarrassingly at them. He ignored a quiet, well-known alderman, who obviously wanted to speak to him. He shepherded them to their places in the Lecture Theatre, sat with them and accomplished the incredible feat of putting Tom Branstone at his ease in the midst of the tipping public. Travers acquired more merit that night than by all his payments of Sam’s school-fees: and Sam himself did nobly, not only on the stage whence he acted at Anne and bowed to Anne, but afterwards when, still in his costume, he paraded with her, drank coffee with her, and met with Shylockian hatred any eye which seemed to hint that he had not tremendous reason to be proud of his little mother. And what he did for her, Lance and Mr. Travers did for Tom. Undoubtedly, a huge success: a night of nights, carved on the tablets of memory in letters of gold: never, not by so much as a dubious hint, to be associated with the illness of Tom Branstone. That was, of course, caused by overwork at Christmas at the station. It had and could have nothing to do with the fact that Tom, coming in ecstasy from the heated school into the cold December night, presently threw off his overcoat and danced exulting on the pavement: conduct so utterly unprecedented, so wholly un-Tom-like, that he had footed it merrily for ten minutes before Anne recovered enough command of him to put an end to the discreditable performance. Besides, for five of the ten minutes, she had danced hand in hand with him. She, too, exulted, but neither of them ever referred to their pagan capering again.