Letter LII

My Dearest: Arthur and the friend went off together yesterday. I am glad
the latter stayed just long enough after you left for me to have leisure
to find him out human. Here is the whole story: he came and unbosomed to
me three days ago: and he said nothing about not telling, so I tell you.
As water goes from a duck's back, so go all things worth hearing from me
to you.

Arthur had said to him, "Come down for a week," and he had answered,
"Can't, because of clothes!" explaining that beyond evening-dress he had
only those he stood in. "Well," said Arthur, "stand in them, then; you
look all right." "The question is," said his friend, "can I sit down?"
However, he came; and was appalled to find that a man unpacked his
trunk, and would in all probability be carrying away his clothes each
night to brush them. He, conscious of interiors, a lining hanging in
rags, and even a patching somewhere, had not the heart to let his one
and only day-jacket go down to the servants' hall to be sniffed over:
and so every evening when he dressed for dinner he hid his jacket
laboriously under the permanent layers of a linen wardrobe which stood
in his room.

I had all this in the frankest manner from him in the hour when he
became human: and my fancy fired at the vision. Graves with a fierce eye
set on duty probing hither and thither in search after the missing coat;
and each night the search becoming more strenuous and the mystery more
baffling than ever. It had a funny likeness to the Jack Raikes episode
in "Evan Harrington," and pleased me the more thus cropping up in real
life.