The Voice in the Fog

"I believe I have enough." Thomas appeared to be disturbed not in the

least by the older man's hilarity. It was not infectious, because he

did not understand it.

"Glad you came to me. Always come to me when you're in doubt about

anything. I'm no authority on clothes, but my secretary is. I'll have

him take you to a tailor where you can rent a suit for to-night. He'll

take your measure, and by the end of the week . . ." He did not finish

the sentence, but pressed one of the many buttons on his desk. "Clark,

this is Mr. Webb, Mrs. Killigrew's secretary. He wants some clothes.

Take him along with you."

Alone again, Killigrew smiled broadly. The humor of the situation did

not blind him to the salient fact that this Webb was a man of no small

courage. He recognized in this courage a commendable shrewdness also:

Webb wanted the right thing, honest clothes for honest dollars. A man

like that would be well worth watching. And for a moment he had

thought that Webb had fallen in love with Kitty and wanted to marry

her! He chuckled. Clothes!

What a boy Kitty would have made! What an infallible eye she had for

measuring a person! No servant-question ever dangled its hot

interrogation point before his eyes. Kitty saw to that. She was the

real manager of the household affairs, for all that he paid the bills.

Some day she would marry a proper man; but heaven keep that day as far

off as possible. What would he do without Kitty? Always ready to

perch on his knee, to smooth the day-cares from his forehead, to fend

off trouble, to make laughter in the house. He was not going to love

the man who eventually carried her off. He was always dreading that

day; young men about the house, the yacht and the summer home worried

him. The whole lot of them were not worthy to tie the laces of her

shoes, much as they might yearn to do so.

And all Webb wanted was a tailor! He would give a hundred for the

right to tell this scare to the boys at the club, but Webb's ingenuous

confidence did not merit betrayal. Still, nothing should prevent him

from telling Kitty, who knew how to keep a secret. He picked up the

newspaper and resumed his computation of averages (batting), chuckling

audibly from time to time. Clothes!

At quarter to six Thomas returned to the house, laden with fat bundles

which he hurried secretly to his room. He had never worn a dress-suit.

He had often guilelessly dreamed of possessing one: between paragraphs,

as another young man might have dreamed of vanquishing a rival. It was

inborn that we should wish to appear well in public; to better one's

condition, or, next best, to make the public believe one has. Thomas

was deeply observant and quickly adaptive. Between the man who goes to

school with books and the man who goes to school in books there is

wide difference. What we are forced to learn seldom lifts us above the

ordinary; what we learn by inclination plows our fields and reaps our

harvests. It is as natural as breathing that we should like our

tonics, mental as well as physical, sugar-coated.