just to fumble off one little bit of tissue paper and see if indeed
the buttons were keeping as bright as ever.

He went trimly along on his way to church full of this wild
desire. For you must know his mother did, with repeated and
careful warnings, let him wear his suit at times, on Sundays, for
example, to and fro from church, when there was no threatening of
rain, no dust nor anything to injure it, with its buttons covered
and its protections tacked upon it and a sunshade in his hand to
shadow it if there seemed too strong a sunlight for its colours.
And always, after such occasions, he brushed it over and folded it
exquisitely as she had taught him, and put it away again.

Now all these restrictions his mother set to the wearing of
his suit he obeyed, always he obeyed them, until one strange night
he woke up and saw the moonlight shining outside his window. It
seemed to him the moonlight was not common moonlight, nor the night
a common night, and for a while he lay quite drowsily with this odd
persuasion in his mind. Thought joined on to thought like things
that whisper warmly in the shadows. Then he sat up in his little
bed suddenly, very alert, with his heart beating very fast and a
quiver in his body from top to toe. He had made up his mind. He
knew now that he was going to wear his suit as it should be worn.
He had no doubt in the matter. He was afraid, terribly afraid, but
glad, glad.

He got out of his bed and stood a moment by the window looking
at the moonshine-flooded garden and trembling at the thing he meant
to do. The air was full of a minute clamor of crickets and
murmurings, of the infinitesimal shouting of little living things.