The next day was a great day in Babelmandel: I rose with the crowing of the cock, and despatched my son Charles on horseback to Judiville, to request uncle Hoskins to come to me immediately. I roused Mrs. Hoskins, to prepare for us the best breakfast and dinner that the means of the village could afford. I directed the two girls to be decked in their fairest frocks, and all the house to be trimmed up and put in order; and I dressed myself in my best suit of black, which is the colour I always wear—it saves money, when relations happen to bequeath the misfortune of going into mourning. But, when all these orders were given, Charles off, and the preparations stirring, a cold thought came into my head: “What if all this story of the bankers be only an invention of Bailie Waft?” It is not possible to describe what I then suffered; but, nevertheless, I resolved to go through the business as if all he had said was gospel; and accordingly, as soon as I had dressed myself, I walked leisurely towards the store to open it for the day, swinging the key of the door on the fore-finger of my right hand as I went along.

I had not proceeded above two hundred yards, when I beheld John Waft coming from his own house towards the road: he, too, had prepared himself for the occasion, being apparelled in his best; but verily he was an admonition by example to all men who delight in coats of many colours.

His coat was of light grey—it had been his wedding garment some time in the course of the last century—adorned with large brazen crown-broad buttons, the least big enough for the censer of an idol's altar. Mr. Herbert called him the solar system, his buttons being planets and moons, and the spots on his swandown waistcoat the fixed stars. His decencies were of purple plush, and his hose of light blue cotton, over which he wore a pair of half boots, with long leather straps dangling over their outside.