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matter with them?”
    “A bit romantic, I would say.”
    “I don’t get it.”
    “‘Romantic’ means associated with the Mediterranean Sea.”
    “I got it at the Hub.”
    “I talked with Mr. Spicer down there, and he was good enough to inquire of the salesman who served you, and learn the circumstances. It seems you mentioned certain singers.”
    “Mr. Scotti’s a dresser.”
    “Perhaps that’s why I take exception.”
    He started talking about clothes, and why a dresser’s not generally a guide on how to dress, all pretty good stuff, as I know now. He said taste is always acquired, and invariably relative, and that the main thing to be remembered was that appropriateness was its basic element. Wine fit for fish, he said, is not necessarily fit for beef, and clothes fit for the Metropolitan Opera weren’t necessarily the right things for Mt. Royal Terrace, Baltimore, Md. But I was still pining for Miss Eleanor, and all I could make out of it was some kind of a crack at her. “If there was something wrong with singers it’s funny Dr. Grant would put one in charge of us.”
    “Did I say something against singers?”
    “Sounded like it.”
    “Why, I’ve been a singer. Mr. McCormack and I—”
    “Yeah, I know about that.”
    “As for Miss Grant, I’ve nothing but admiration for her. I was perfectly content, you may remember, that you study with her. I may say that the first suit you got yourself, at a time when you were seeing so much of her, and as I suppose accepting her guidance, did you credit—so much so that I refrained from raising the issue of parental authority, and forbade my sisters to do so.”
    “I had no guidance.”
    “Then you did very well. However, we’ll do better, for the next few years anyway, if you accept some sort of supervision. Tomorrow we’ll both go over to the Hub, I’ll resume my duties as a father, and I imagine come out of it with something creditable in the way of a coat.”
    But who went to the Hub was all four of us, Nancy, Sheila, he, and I. And for some reason I don’t understand, even now as I write about it, I just wouldn’t try anything on. I just sat there, and when we came home it was pretty thick and each of them went upstairs.
    But the weather kept getting colder, and I kept thinking of a coat I had seen a guy try on that day, a blue, with a belt, and long loose lines that would just go with the double-breasted suit. So one day I went down there, and it was still unsold, and I tried it on. It fit like it had been poured on me. I paraded up and down in front of all the mirrors, and tried it with the stick and without the stick, and the more I tried it the better I liked it. So I took it and sat down and wrote a check. I wanted to wear it out of there, but they said something about pressing it and lengthening the sleeves a bit, which of course I know now had to do with the check, which wasn’t something a fourteen-year-old boy came in there with every day. But then I paid no attention, and went home, and began watching for delivery trucks. But instead of a truck, one day came a letter from them. They said no doubt there had been some mistake; but would I kindly straighten the matter out so they could send me my coat? And enclosed was my check. On it was a stamp that said payment had been refused, but the reason it had been refused was written in ink, and I couldn’t make it out. So at lunch hour that day I went around to the bank and talked to Mr. Parrot. “Yes, Jack, it was the only thing we could do, and in fact I handled it myself. But there’s the court order, and it’s binding on us.”
    “Court order?”
    “... The one obtained by your father.”
    He rummaged in his desk and came up with a paper with brass staples and a blue cover and handed it over to me. It had my father’s name on it and the bank officers’ names on it and the bank itself, and said something about John Dillon, a minor. “You see, Jack, sometimes a situation arises, as a