"Would he make me a suit?"

"Why, yes. I'll give you a card to him and you go in there when you're
in New York and pick out what you want."

"Oh! He wouldn't make them and send them out here to me? Sears-Roebuck
do, if you send your measure. They're in Chicago."

"I never had any duds built in Chicago, so I don't know them. But I
shouldn't think Mertoun would want to fit a man he'd never seen. They
like to do things _right_, at Mertoun's. Ought to, too; they stick you
enough for it."

"How much?"

"Not much short of a hundred for a sack suit."

Banneker was amazed. The choicest "made-to-measure" in his Universal
Guide, "Snappy, fashionable, and up to the minute," came to less than
half of that.

His admiring eye fell upon his visitor's bow-tie, faultless and
underanged throughout the vicissitudes of that arduous day, and he
yearned to know whether it was "made-up" or self-confected.
Sears-Roebuck were severely impartial as between one practice and the
other, offering a wide range in each variety. He inquired.

"Oh, tied it myself, of course," returned Cressey. "Nobody wears the
ready-made kind. It's no trick to do it. I'll show you, any time."