wore its Sunday best. Even the shabbiest little girls had a clean
white pinafore to hide deficiencies beneath, and the untidiest
little boy showed a scrubbed face. The majority of the boys wore
clean collars; some grinned over gaudy neckties. The only one who
appeared in his week-day grime and tatterdemalion outfit was little
Paul Kegworthy. He had not changed his clothes, because he had no
others; and he had not washed his face, because it had not occurred
to him to do so. Moreover, Mrs. Button had made no attempt to
improve his forlorn aspect, for the simple reason that she had never
heard of the Sunday-school treat. It was part of Paul's philosophy
to dispense, as far as he could, with parental control. On Sunday
afternoons the little Buttons played in the streets, where Paul, had
he so chosen, might have played also: but he put himself, so to
speak, to Sunday school, where, besides learning lots of queer
things about God and Jesus Christ which interested him keenly, he
could shine above his fellows by recitations of collects and bits of
Catechism, which did not interest him at all. Then he won scores of
good-conduct cards, gaudy treasures, with pictures of Daniel in the
Lions' Den and the Marriage of Cana and such like, which he secreted
preciously beneath a loose slab in the scullery floor. He did not
show them to his mother, knowing that she would tear them up and
bang him over the head; and for similar reasons he refrained from
telling her of the Sunday-school treat. If she came to hear of it,
as possibly she would through one of the little Buttons, who might
pick up the news in the street, he would be soundly beaten. But
there was a chance of her not hearing, and he desired to be no more
of a blight than he could help. So Paul, vagabond and self-reliant
from his babyhood, turned up at the Sunday-school treat, hatless and
coatless, his dirty little toes visible through the holes in his
boots, and his shapeless and tattered breeches secured to his person