"I hope you've finished all that rubbishing talk. There's some tea in the tea-pot on the hob, if you want any. Don't upset things."
Burton drifted mechanically into the kitchen, noting its disorder with a new disapproval. He sat on the edge of the table for a few moments, gazing helplessly about him. Presently Ellen descended the stairs and called to him. He took up his hat and followed his wife and the boy out of the house. The latter eyed him wonderingly.
"Look at pa's hat!" he shouted. "Oh, my!"
Ellen stopped short upon her way to the gate.
"Alfred," she exclaimed, "you don't mean to say you're coming out with us like that—coming to the band, too, where we shall meet everyone?"
"Certainly, my dear," Burton replied, placing the object of their remarks fearlessly upon his head. "You may not be quite used to it yet, but I can assure you that it is far more becoming and suitable than a cheap silk hat, especially for an occasion like the present."
Ellen opened her mouth and closed it again—it was perhaps wise!
"Come on," she said abruptly. "Alfred wants to hear the soldier music and we are late already. Take your father's hand."
They started upon their pilgrimage. Burton, at any rate, spent a miserable two hours. He hated the stiff, brand-new public garden in which they walked, with its stunted trees, its burnt grass, its artificial and weary flower-beds. He hated the people who stood about as they did, listening to the band—the giggling girls, the callow, cigarette-smoking youths, the dressed up, unnatural replicas of his own wife and himself, with whom he was occasionally forced to hold futile conversation. He hated the sly punch in the ribs from one of his quondam companions, the artful murmur about getting the missis to look another way and the hurried visit to a neighboring public-house, the affected anger and consequent jokes which followed upon their return. As they walked homeward, the cold ugliness of it all seemed almost to paralyze his newly awakened senses. It was their social evening of the week, looked forward to always by his wife, spoken of cheerfully by him even last night, an evening when he might have had to bring home friends to supper, to share a tin of sardines, a fragment of mutton, Dutch cheese, and beer which he himself would have had to fetch from the nearest public-house. He wiped his forehead and found that it was wet. Then Ellen broke the silence.
"What I should like to know, Alfred, is—what's come to you?" she commenced indignantly. "Not a word have you spoken all the evening—you that there's no holding generally with your chaff and jokes. What Mr. and Mrs. Johnson must have thought of you, I can't imagine, standing there like a stick when they stopped to be civil for a few minutes, and behaving as though you never even heard their asking us to go in and have a bite of supper. What have we done, eh, little Alf and me? You look at us as though we had turned into ogres. Out with it, my man. What's wrong?"
"I am not—"
Burton stopped short. The lie of ill-health stuck in his throat. He thirsted to tell the truth, but a new and gentle kindliness kept him speechless. Ellen was beginning to get a little frightened.
"What is it that's come to you, Alfred?" she again demanded. "Have you lost your tongue or your wits or what?"
"I do not know," he answered truthfully enough. His manner was so entirely non-provocative that her resentment for a moment dropped.
"What's changed you since yesterday?" she persisted. "What is it that you don't like about us, anyway? What do you want us to do?"
Burton sighed. He would have given a great deal to have been able to prevaricate, but he could not. It was the truth alone which he could speak.
"I should like you," he said, "to take down your hair and throw away all that is not real, to wash it until it is its natural color, to brush it hard, and then do it up quite simply, without a net or anything. Then I should like you to wash your face thoroughly in plain soap and water and never again touch a powder-puff or that nasty red stuff you have on your lips. I should like you to throw away those fancy blouses with the imitation lace, which are ugly to start with, and which you can't afford to have washed often enough, and I should like you to buy some plain linen shirts and collars, a black tie, and a blue serge skirt made so that you could walk in it naturally."
Ellen did not at that moment need any rouge, nor any artificial means of lending brightness to her eyes. What she really seemed to need was something to keep her still.
"Anything else?" she demanded, unsteadily.
"Some thicker stockings, or, if not thicker, stockings without that open-work stuff about them," Burton continued earnestly, warming now to his task. "You see, the open-work places have all spread into little holes, and one can't help noticing it, especially as your shoes are such a bright yellow. That stuff that looks like lace at the bottom of your petticoat has got all draggled. I should cut it off and throw it away. Then I'd empty all that scent down the drain, and wear any sort of gloves except those kid ones you have had cleaned so often."
"And my hat?" she asked with trembling lips. "What about my hat? Don't leave that out."
"Burn it," he replied eagerly, "feathers and all. They've been dyed, haven't they? more than once, and I think their present color is their worst. It must be very uncomfortable to wear, too, with all those pins sticking out of it. Colored glass they are made of, aren't they? They are not pretty, you know. I'll buy you a hat, if you like, a plain felt or straw, with just a few flowers. You'll look as nice again."
"Finished?"
He looked at her apprehensively.
"There are one or two things about the house—" he commenced.
Ellen began to talk—simply because she was unable to keep silent any longer. The longer she talked, the more eloquent she became. When she had finished, Burton had disappeared. She followed him to the door, and again to the gate. Her voice was still ringing in his ears as he turned the corner of the street.
CHAPTER IV
A SHOCK TO MR. WADDINGTON
Punctually at nine o'clock on the following morning, Alfred Burton, after a night spent in a very unsatisfactory lodging-house, hung up his gray Homburg on the peg consecrated to the support of his discarded silk hat, and prepared to plunge into his work. The office-boy, who had been stricken dumb at his senior's appearance, recovered himself at last sufficiently for speech.
"My eye!" he exclaimed. "Whose clothes have you been stealing? What have you been up to, eh? Committing a burglary or a murder?"
Burton shook his head.
"Nothing of the sort," he replied pleasantly. "The fact is I came to the conclusion that my late style of dress, as you yourself somewhat eloquently pointed out yesterday, was unbecoming."
The boy seemed a little dazed.
"You look half way between a toff and an artist!" he declared. "What's it all about, anyway? Have you gone crazy?"
"I don't think so," Burton replied. "I rather think I have come to my senses. Have you got those last furniture accounts?"
"No use
