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N the morning of the following day we were engaged about a business which troubled me no little. Had it not been for Jerome I fear I had never come through it at all with credit.

First, we repaired to another house which Jerome possessed in a more fashionable quarter, and thither by his directions came a fawning swarm of tailors, boot-makers, barbers, wig-makers; vendors of silken hose and men with laces, jaunty caps, perfumes—it was a huge task, this making a gentlemen of me—as Jerome phrased it.

I worried over it grievously in the beginning, but at length sullenly delivered myself into his hands, murmuring an abject prayer for the salvation of my soul. That, at least, was not to be remodelled by all their fashionable garniture. These heated discussions concerning what I was to wear were not for me to put a voice in. Verily, I knew nothing and cared naught for the cut of a shoe my Lord of Orleans had made the style, nor did it matter whether my coat was slashed with crimson or braided with golden furbelows. Like some wretch a-quivering of the palsy I heard the learned doctors