Speech, for the moment, was absolutely impossible.
She stood and stared at him, her arms akimbo, disapproval written in her
face. Her hair was exceedingly untidy and there was a smut upon her
cheek. A soiled lace collar, fastened with an imitation diamond brooch,
had burst asunder.
"What's come to your moustache?" she demanded. "And why are you dressed
like--like a house-painter on a Sunday?"
Burton found his first gleam of consolation. A newly-discovered sense
of humor soothed him inexplicably.
"Sorry you don't like my clothes," he replied. "You'll get used to
them."
"Get used to them!" his better half repeated, almost hysterically. "Do
you mean to say you are going about like that?"
"Something like it," Burton admitted.
"No silk hat, no tail coat?"
Burton shook his head gently.
"I trust," he said, "that I have finished, for the present, at any rate,
with those most unsightly garments."
"Come inside," Ellen ordered briskly.
They passed into the little sitting-room. Burton glanced around him
with a half-frightened sense of apprehension. His memory, at any rate,
had not played him false. Everything was as bad--even worse than he had
imagined. The suite of furniture which was the joy of his wife's heart
had been, it is true, exceedingly cheap, but the stamped magenta velvet
was as crude in its coloring as his own discarded tie.
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