Possible Clues:

• In tidy condition
• Neat and well-kept
• Fully prepared to take chance on joints in the Home Counties
• Well-kept, to a swabby
• Trim with a design for top hat is, perhaps, not right
• In good order, like well-dressed sailor?
• All in order to be sharp at one end and blunt at the other
• Trim and tidy
• Orderly's repeated 'Silence!' keeping one quiet, the brute
• Narrower at the bottom and the front, perhaps, and 17 25