“But look at your clothes,” said Humility; and they looked.

“This is serious,” said Mr. Raymond.  “Dear, you must make us a couple of working suits of corduroy or some such stuff:  otherwise this pew-making won’t pay.”

Humility stood out against this for a day or two.  That her husband and child should go dressed like common workmen!  But there was no help for it, and on the Monday week Taffy went forth to work in moleskin breeches, blue guernsey, and loose white smock.  As for Mr. Raymond, the only badge of his calling was his round clerical hat; and as all the miners in the neighbourhood wore hats of the same soft felt and only a trifle higher in the crown, this hardly amounted to a distinction.

Humility’s eyes were full of tears as she watched them from the door that morning.  But Taffy felt as proud as Punch.  A little before noon he carried out a board that required sawing, and rested it on a flat tombstone where, with his knee upon it, he could get a good purchase.  He was sawing away when he heard a dog barking, and looked up to see Honoria coming along the path with George’s terrier frisking at her heels.

She halted outside the lych-gate, and Taffy, vain of his new clothes, drew himself up and nodded.

“Good-morning,” said Honoria.  “I’m not allowed to speak to you and I’m not going to, after this.”  She swooped on the puppy and held him.  “See what George brought home from Plymouth for me.  Isn’t he a beauty?”

Held so, by the scruff of his neck, he was not a beauty.  Taffy had it on the tip of his tongue to tell her about the collar.  He wished he had brought it.

“I wonder,” she went on pensively, “your mother had the heart to dress you out in that style.  But I suppose now you’ll be growing up into quite a common boy.”

Taffy decided to say nothing about the collar.  “I like the clothes,” he declared defiantly.

“Then you can’t have the common instincts of a gentleman.  Well, good-bye!  Grandfather has salvation all right this time; he said he’d put the stick about me if I dared to speak to you.”

“He won’t know.”

“Won’t know?  Why I shall tell him, of course, when I get back.”

“But—­but he mustn’t beat you!”

She eyed him for a moment or two in silence.  “Mustn’t he?  I advise you to go and tell him.”  She walked away slowly, whistling; but by-and-by broke into a run and was gone, the puppy scampering behind her.

As the days grew longer and the weather milder, Taffy and his father worked late into the evenings; sometimes, if the job needed to be finished, by the light of a couple of candles.

One evening, about nine o’clock, the boy as he planed a bench paused suddenly.  “What’s that?”

They listened.  The door stood open, and after a second or two they heard the sound of feet tiptoeing away up the path outside.