"When will men give up smoking pipes, I should like to know?"
"I thought you were a pipe smoker?"
"So I was, but I can t bear the smell any longer."
"Yet you smoke cigars?"
"Cigars are different."
"How was it the change came?"
"I don't know." Owen ordered a thousand cigars to be sent to Berkeley
Square.
It was late for tea, and still too early for dinner.
"I am sorry to ask you to dine at such an early hour, but I daresay
we shan't have dinner till half-past seven."
But Harding remembered his tailor: some trousers. And he led Owen
towards Hanover Square, wondering if Owen would approve of his
choice?
"It was like you to choose that grey."
Now what was there to find fault with in the grey he had chosen? They
turned over the tailor's pattern sheet. Daring, in the art of
dressing, is the prescriptive right of the professional just as it
is in writing. Owen was a professional dresser, whereas he, Harding,
was but an amateur; and that was why he had chosen a timid,
insignificant grey. At once Owen discovered a much more effective
cloth; and he chose a coat for Harding, who wanted one--the same
rough material which Harding had often admired on Owen's shoulders.
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