But there was an
alteration in the place, a certain Sunday look about the room, which
Alec could not account for. The same caricatures jested from the walls;
the same tumbler of toddy was steaming on the table amidst the same
litter of books and papers covered with the same dust and marked with
the same circles from the bottoms of wet tumblers and glasses. The same
cutty-clay, of enviable blackness, reposed between the teeth of Mr
Cupples.
After he had been seated for a few moments, however, Alec all at once
discovered the source of the reformation-look of the place: Mr Cupples
had on a shirt-collar--clean and of imposing proportions. To this no
doubt was attached a shirt, but as there was no further sign of its
presence, it could not have affected the aspect of things. Although,
however, this shirt-collar was no doubt the chief cause of the change
of expression in the room, Alec, in the course of the evening,
discovered further signs of improvement in the local morals; one, that
the hearth had been cleared of a great heap of ashes, and now looked
modest and moderate as if belonging to an old maid's cottage, instead
of an old bachelor's garret; and another, that, upon the untidy table,
lay an open book of divinity, a volume of Gurnall's _Christian Armour_
namely, which I fear Mr Cupples had chosen more for its wit than its
devotion.
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