212520_The_Adve ... _Way_Through_The_World.pdf - OUDL Home

394 THE ADVENTURES OF PHILIP
could be welcome. He kept aloof from tea-parties then: his
evening-dress clothes served him for a long time. I cannot say
how old his dress-coat was at the time of which we are writing.
But he had been in the habit of respecting that garment and considering
it new and handsome for many years past. Meanwhile
the coat had shrunk, or its wearer had grown stouter; and his
grand embroidered, embossed, illuminated, carved and gilt velvet
dress waistcoat, too, had narrowed, had become absurdly tight and
short, and I daresay was the laughing-stock of many of Philip's
acquaintances, whilst he himself, poor simple fellow, was fancying
that it was a most splendid article of apparel. You know in the
Palais Royal they hang out the most splendid reach-me-down
dressing-gowns, waistcoats, and so forth. "No," thought Philip,
coming out of his cheap dining-house, and swaggering along the
arcades, and looking at the tailors' shops, with his hands in his
pockets. " My brown velvet dress waistcoat with the gold sprigs,
which I had made at college, is a much more tasty thing than these
gaudy ready-made articles. And my coat is old, certainly, but the
brass buttons are still very bright and handsome, and, in fact, it
is a most becoming and gentlemanlike thing." And under this
delusion the honest fellow dressed himself in his old clothes, lighted
a pair of candles, and looked at himself with satisfaction in the
looking-glass, drew on a pair of cheap gloves which he had bought,
walked by the Quays, and over the Deputies' Bridge, across the
Place Louis XV., and strutted up the Faubourg St. Honoré to the
Hotel of the British Embassy. A half-mile queue of carriages was
formed along the street, and of course the entrance to the hotel was
magnificently illuminated.
A plague on those cheap gloves ! Why had not Philip paid
three francs for a pair of gloves, instead of twenty-nine sous ? Mrs.
Baynes had found a capital cheap glove shop, whither poor Phil
had gone in the simplicity of his heart ; and now as he went in
under the grand illuminated porte-cochere, Philip saw that the
gloves had given way at the thumbs, and that his hands appeared
through the rents, as red as raw beefsteaks. It is wonderful how
red hands will look through holes in white gloves. " And there's
that hole in my boot, too," thought Phil ; but he had put a little
ink over the seam, and so the rent was imperceptible. The coat
and waistcoat were tight, and of a past age. Never mind. The
chest was broad, the arms were muscular and long, and Phil's face,
in the midst of a halo of fair hair and flaming whiskers, looked
brave, honest, and handsome. For a while his eyes wandered
fiercely and restlessly all about the room from group to group;
but now—ah ! now—they were settled. They had met another pair