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Rh "If you met Ponderby in Piccadilly, dressed in my clothes, is there any chance you might mistake him for me?"

Mackeller glanced from one to the other, a slow smile coming to his lips.

"I don't know that I should mistake him for you, but one not quite so well acquainted with you both might do so."

"Wait till you see Ponderby in his new togs, and I think you'll admit the likeness. For years Ponderby has been modelling himself upon me, and unconsciously I have been modelling myself upon Ponderby, until now we appear to have absorbed one another's good qualities, with very much the same cast of feature."

All the while that this conversation, which might have seemed embarrassing, was going on, Ponderby stood like a graven image and never even smiled.

"When does the Adriatic sail, Peter?"

"On the fourteenth."

"Very well, Ponderby, you will go to my tailor's and bespeak a full outfit of clothes, exactly such as you would order for me, only you must be measured for them. It is necessary that they fit you with that exactness which you have always been successful in obtaining on my behalf. The tailor must have these things ready, and in this house, by the evening of the twelfth. Understand