She said she had picked it up on one of the landings, and that there was
a pair of continuations lying in a broken bonnet-box just close to it,
and that the continuations were ruined by too much water.
I could feel myself blushing redder and redder.
"In a bonnet-box, eh?" said Master Ellis.
Then he said: "Would you mind letting me look at the right-hand
breast-pocket of that jacket?"
She didn't mind in the least. He looked at the strip of white linen that
your men's tailors always stitch into that pocket with your name and
address and date, and age and weight, and I don't know what.
He said, "Thank you."
And she asked him if the jacket was his.
"Yes," he said, "but I hope you'll keep it."
Everybody said what a very curious coincidence! Ellis avoided my eyes,
and I avoided his.... Will you believe me that when we "had it out"
afterwards, he and I, that boy was seriously angry. He suspected me of a
plan "to make the best of him" during the stay with the Smiths, and he
very strongly objected to being "made the best of." His notion
apparently was that even his worst was easily good enough for my
Colonial friends, although, as he'd have said, they _had_ "simply wiped
the floor with him" in the billiard-room.
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