Page:A Legend of Camelot, Pictures and Poems, etc. George du Maurier, 1898.djvu/141

 Lady, and they were much charmed with all they saw. This Baronet could not only tell a pretty picture when he was told, but also a pretty face when he saw one. Most Baronets are equal to that; and as for my Lady, a good-natured and impulsive person, she was quite beside herself with delight at the notion of Genius painting Beauty, while Beauty darned the socks of Genius. She immediately looked upon Mr. and Mrs. Jack Spratt as a pet little invention of her own; and before she had been five minutes in their company, invited them to a "small and early" at her mansion, in Belgrave Square. By this time also the Spratts' life-long prejudice against the aristocracy had quite evaporated; and they accepted this invitation with alacrity.

Well, the Spratts duly attended that "small and early," attired in their very best. Mr. Punch forgets what Mrs. Spratt's very best consisted of at this particular period of her career; but rather thinks it must have been a broidered wimple, surcinctured with a golden liripipe over a welted chaisel-smock of watchet sergedusoy, lined with shalloon, and edged with vair, or possibly ermine.

Jack Spratt so far gave way to the conventionalities of modern life as to wear a gent's evening suit complete for three-seventeen-six (made to order by a suburban tailor for this special occasion), and put a smart peacock's feather in his button-hole. At the same time, in order to show how simple and unworldly he really was, he sported a watch-guard made of common pack-thread, and left his luxuriant locks untouched by the comb.

They got to the "small and early" an hour and a half too soon, and had to disport themselves alone in those gilded Belgravian Saloons until the company had done dinner. Presently the great and gay came trooping in, and the Spratts mingled with the glittering throng, and liked it very much, especially Mrs. S., who thought it very civil and attentive; it is not too much to say that she attracted far more notice than any of the highborn ladies there, even the Papuan ambassadress.

In the course of the evening, Mrs. Spratt was prevailed upon by her amiable hostess (whom nobody had ever been known to resist) to sit on a stool, as she had done in the famous picture, and darn a beautiful blue and yellow silk sock of the Baronet's to a running accompaniment on the pianoforte by one of our rising composers, who had been cunningly invited on purpose, while Spratt was made to stand by in the attitude of an early Italian Master consumed by a pure but wasting passion.

This impromptu tableau had an immense success, and our simple friends were the lions of the evening, and passed a delightful time, and quickly, but firmly, resolved that this outer world they had taken such pains to shun had its charms, and that they would certainly cease to shun it in future.

Mrs. Spratt's deep-rooted dislike to the female dress of the present day did not last much longer than her life-long prejudice against the aristocracy. The very next morning after that small and early, she discarded the mediæval garments she had hitherto worn with such disdain for the eccentricities of modern fashion, and put herself into the hands of the best dress-maker in town. She had always looked lovely in her quaint old-fashioned attire, although the irreverent outside world had been wont to smile thereat as she took her walks abroad; but oh! how far lovelier she looked in the latest Paris mode, with chamois-leather underclothing, and tightly clinging skirts that showed her as she really was! The simple-minded Jack hardly recognised her, and in the depths of his modest mind he made comparisons between his wife and his lay figure, that were not always to the advantage of the latter.

He also bespoke the services of a fashionable West-end Artist; no more suburban evening suits for him! but a beautiful dress-coat, with black velvet collar, and watered-silk facings; a white waistcoat, with three coral buttons to match the shirt-studs, only bigger; trousers cut rather wide; neat pumps, and black silk socks, with white clocks; and for his button-hole a Stephanotis, in a little glass tube full of water to keep it fresh. 64