"Sir," said he, "I should be glad to please not only a friend of Sir Arthur Pembroke, but also a gentleman of such parts as yourself. I hesitate to promise--" "But you must promise," said John Law. "Well, then, I do promise! I will have this apparel at your place on the day which you name. 'Tis most extraordinary, but the order shall be executed." "As I thought," said John Law. "But I must thank you besides," resumed the tradesman. "In good truth I must say that of all the young gentlemen who come hither--and I may show the names of the best nobility of London and of some ports beyond seas--there hath never stepped within these doors a better figure than yourself--nay, not so good. And I am a judge of men." Law looked at him carelessly. "You shall make me none the easier, nor yourself the easier, by soft speech," said he, "if you have not these garments ready by the time appointed. Send them, and you shall have back the fifty sovereigns by the messenger, with perhaps a coin or so in addition if all be well." "The air of this nobility!" said the tailor, but smiling with pleasure none the less. "This is, perhaps, some affair with a lady?" he added. "'Tis an affair with a lady, and also with certain gentlemen." "Oh, so," said the tailor. "If it he, forsooth, an enterprise with a lady, methinks I know the outcome now." He gazed with professional pride upon the symmetrical figure before him. "You shall be all the better armed when well fitted in my garments. Not all London shall furnish a properer figure of a man, nor one better clad, when I shall have done with you, sir." Law but half heard him, for he was already turning toward the door, where he beckoned again for his waiting chair. "To the offices of the Bank of England," he directed. And forthwith he was again jogging through the crowded streets of London. The offices of the Bank of England, to which this young adventurer now so nonchalantly directed his course, were then not housed in any such stately edifice as that which now covers the heart of the financial world, nor did the location of the young and struggling institution, in a by-street of the great city, tend to give dignity to a concern which still lacked importance and assuredness. Thither, then, might have gone almost any young traveler who needed a letter of credit cashed, or a bill changed after the fashion of the passing goldsmiths.