And yet Mr. Fildew's shabby attire was not altogether a matter of necessity with him. One day his son Clement ventured to say, "Father, I wish you would go to my tailor, and let him set you up with some new toggery."
Clem was brushing the collar of his father's coat at the time, and the remark was made laughingly, but Mr. Fildew turned with a scowl and confronted his son. "Confound your tailor, sir!" he cried. "And you, too," he added next moment. "Do you think I'm a pauper, that you offer to pay for my clothes? If you are ashamed to be seen out with me, remember, sir, that there are always two sides to a street." And with that Mr. Fildew turned on his heel in high dudgeon.
Clement and his mother exchanged glances of dismay. "You know how peculiar your father is, dear," said Mrs. Fildew afterwards, "and what little things sometimes touch his dignity. It was injudicious of you to say what you did."
Clement shrugged his shoulders. "I have lived with my father all my life, and yet I confess that I only half understand him," said the young man. "At times he is a complete enigma to me."
"I have lived with him more years than you have, and I think that I almost understand him: almost, but not quite," responded Mrs. Fildew, with a smile. "But then a woman always does understand a man better than another man can hope to do."
Clement Fildew might well say that his father was an enigma to him. Although the latter refused so indignantly to allow his son to be at the expense of refurnishing his wardrobe, he was not too proud to accept from him his weekly supply of pocket-money. But then the money in question found its way from Clement's pocket to that of his father after such a delicate and diplomatic fashion that the susceptibilities of Mr. Fildew had never hitherto been wounded in the transaction. Every Friday Clement placed in his mother's hands the sum of one guinea. The sovereign and shilling in question were wrapped up by Mrs. Fildew in a piece of tissue-paper, and quietly deposited by her in a certain drawer in her husband's dressing-table. By Saturday morning the tiny packet would have disappeared. No questions were asked; neither Mrs. Fildew nor her husband ever spoke to each other on the matter but silence has often a meaning of its own, and it had in this case.