ARRY DAYTON was a tailor in Old England. In Calcutta he was a gents' outfitter, which was a marked distinction without much difference. That was in the good old days, when the partner in the leading houses of that sort made princely incomes.
Harry Dayton the elder was a good judge of many things besides cloth, and when he awoke to the fact that his two boys, Harry and Jack, had come in for a fair share of the brain which had always been his, he determined to give them a little better "send off," as he called it, than he had had himself.
The ethics of the prize-ring, and a few other kindred subjects to the study of which he had devoted many good years of his life, he found of not much practical use in the fulness of his manhood.
"The boys 'll 'ave a better chance than I 'ad," he said, and "'aving the oof," as he always designated her Majesty's current coin, he proceeded to buy them the best things in the educational line to be had in the open market.
But the whirligig of time has a merry way of proving that sevens are threes just after one has figured the whole sum of life out satisfactorily, and thus upsetting the calculation; and Harry, junr., and Jack—fine, manly-looking fellows they were, too—by the same token, having just failed to hit it off in the few things they went in for, had to come back to the business in which their "old man" had made the jam for his bread and butter,
It was in September that Harry, junr., walked into his father's place of business in Old Court House Street, in Calcutta, to take his place as assistant salesman. It mellowed the old man's heart to see his fine, strapping son, with his pleasant manners, in the old place; in fact, he got very mellow that same evening, and wept tears of gratitude to think that the chip of the old block had developed into a finer piece of furniture than the old block itself.
"I'm going to send you up country, Harry," he said, with the promiscuous letting loose of a few h's; "I'm going to send you up country to look up business; and with the advantage you have had in the way of education, and with the good name the house has got, you ought to come back with a tidy bundle of orders. I want you to go and see Colonel Trendenis, at Mugawani. Your uncle Tony was butler in their family at home. He used to be a good customer, but I am afraid that he has been working the native racket lately, for we haven't written his name in our books for some time; so you ought to sell him a tidy bit of goods. With his recommendation you ought to get an order from every officer in the regiment. You can work a few of the other places on the way up, and I'll write him a letter asking him to favour you with his patronage. That's the line to play them on, Harry. Call it patronage, and then they have to come down handsome if they do anything at all."
The next day Harry the younger started on his tour, but the fate which juggles things about urged him to skip most of the towns on the way, and put it into his head that it would be better to get up to Mugawani at an early date and work back.
Harry the elder would rather cut a suit of clothes—yes, forty suits—than write one letter; so he put off the hour of tribulation from day to day, keeping a mental reckoning of Harry's movements. "He's at Benares now," he would say to himself, and the next day he would figure him out at Allahabad. After a few days he would pass him on to another town—all in his mind. But in the flesh Harry was up at Mugawani, this wise.
When Harry arrived at Mugawani a crazy old gharry took him and his traps to Bynkles Family Hotel. A good appearance is everything, the old man used to tell Harry, so he spent some time over the good appearance, and then started out to look up Colonel Trendenis.
The Colonel was at the mess, and Harry sent in his card when he arrived there.
Now, Harry's fastidiousness reached out even to his cards. His father, with his superior commercial development, had loaded him up with a few thousand cards bearing the prosaic statement that Harry Dayton, Junr., was representing Harry Dayton, Senr., Gents' Outfitter, etc.
"They're all right for the old man," muttered Harry to himself, as he shovelled them into his box, "but I'm hanged if I'm going to travel around with my pocket full of advertisements like that." So he substituted his own small bits of pasteboard, carrying the plain inscription, "Harry Dayton," and it was because of this that the thing happened as it did.
"Sahib sends salaams," said the tall bearer who had taken his card in to the Colonel, when he returned to Harry. At the door of the billiard room the Colonel, cue in hand and hat off, met Harry with a boisterous rush of jovial friendship.