But as soon as he developed this ideal to his family,
which he did in pompous disdain of their anxieties
about their own dress, they said he should not go so.
Irene reminded him that he was the only person without
a dress-coat at a corps reunion dinner which he had taken
her to some years before, and she remembered feeling awfully
about it at the time. Mrs. Lapham, who would perhaps
have agreed of herself, shook her head with misgiving.
"I don't see but what you'll have to get you one, Si,"
she said. "I don't believe they ever go without 'em to
a private house."
He held out openly, but on his way home the next day,
in a sudden panic, he cast anchor before his tailor's
door and got measured for a dress-coat. After that he
began to be afflicted about his waist-coat, concerning
which he had hitherto been airily indifferent.
He tried to get opinion out of his family, but they were
not so clear about it as they were about the frock.
It ended in their buying a book of etiquette,
which settled the question adversely to a white waistcoat.
The author, however, after being very explicit in telling
them not to eat with their knives, and above all not
to pick their teeth with their forks,--a thing which he
said no lady or gentleman ever did,--was still far from
decided as to the kind of cravat Colonel Lapham ought
to wear: shaken on other points, Lapham had begun to waver
also concerning the black cravat.
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