Take them off at once, sir--and put on your proper ones." "Aren't they--isn't it the thing, the form, you know, for--" "Form! Fiddlesticks.

The thing at Low Heath is to behave and dress like gentlemen, not like vulgar, public-house potmen," said she, with an access of indignation which surprised me.

"To think that you, with a nice mother like yours, should come up here a fright like that! There, put the shoes and hat in the trunk with the speckled waistcoat and shirts, and get yourself up decently, and then I'll speak to you." I was under the impression she _had_ spoken to me--pretty strongly too.
This, then, was the end of my elaborately prepared toilet! A horrid suspicion began to come over me at last, not only that Tempest had been having a little joke at my expense, but that I had lent myself to it with an alacrity and eagerness which had almost--nay, very nearly wholly--been ridiculous.
What does the reader think?
My further conversation with good Mrs Smiley, after I had, to use her own expression, made myself decent, only tended to confirm the painful impression.

I even went to the length of adding, of my own accord, my six-button lavender gloves to the pile of sacrificed finery which strewed the bottom of my trunk.

And when in due time a bell rang, and Mrs Smiley said, "There now, go down to call-over, and don't be a silly any more," I obeyed with a meekness and diffidence of which I could hardly have believed myself capable, had I not been quite sure of the fact..