"And I was thinking that, getting your clothes here in Nice, I shall have to keep a very sharp eye on them, or they'll go dressing you like a French American--you know, an American who is dressed by a Paris tailor.

And that wouldn't do at all." "No: of course not," said Septimus Rainer quickly.
But it was not till they came to the tailor's that he realised the full seriousness of the business before them.

At first he supposed that he was to have his say in the matter; but at the end of ten minutes, with a half-humorous abandonment, he put himself entirely in the hands of the conscientious Tinker, and indeed had he not done so, there is no saying that he might not have gone about the world parading a velvet collar on a grey frock coat.

It was Tinker who decided, after weighty consideration, upon the colour and texture of the stuff of each suit, chose the very buttons for it, and forced upon the reluctant Nicois his ideas of the way each separate garment should be cut.

Septimus Rainer was frankly bewildered at the end of half an hour; he was used, in the way of business, to carrying a multiplicity of details in his head, but these details it could not carry.