christened, _said_ he said his prayers, _knew_ his Catechism,
and _was_ ready for school, church, and choir, but had not got a
Sunday suit--a fresh series of riddles propounded themselves to her busy
brain. Would her father yield up his everyday coat and take his Sunday
one into weekday wear? Could the charity bag do better than pay the
tailor's widow for adapting this old coat to the new chorister's back,
taking it in at the seams, turning it wrong-side out, and getting new
sleeves out of the old tails? Could she herself spare the boots which
the village cobbler had just re-soled for her--somewhat clumsily--and
would the "allowance" bag bear this strain? Might she hope to coax an
old pair of trowsers out of her cousin, who was spending his Long
Vacation at the Vicarage, and who never reckoned very closely with
_his_ allowance, and kept no charity bag at all? Lastly would "that
old curmudgeon at the Dovecot" let his little farm-boy go to church and
school and choir?

"I must go and persuade him," said the young lady.

What she said, and what (at the time) Daddy Darwin said, Jack never
knew. He was at high sport with the terrier round the big sweet-brier
bush, when he saw his old master slitting the seams of his
weather-beaten coat in the haste with which he plucked crimson clove
carnations as if they had been dandelions, and presented them, not
ungracefully, to the parson's daughter.

Jack knew why she had come, and strained his ears to catch his own name.
But Daddy Darwin was promising pipings of the cloves.

"They are such dear old-fashioned things," said she, burying her nose in
the bunch.