If Dabney had expected a storm to come from his mother’s end of the table, he was pleasantly mistaken, and his sisters had it all to themselves for a moment.  Then, with an admiring glance at her son, the thoughtful matron remarked: 

“Just like his father, for all the world.  It’s no use, girls.  Dabney’s a growing boy in more ways than one.  Dabney, I shall want you to go over to the Morris house with me after breakfast.  Then you may hitch up the ponies, and we’ll do some errands around the village.”

[Illustration:  DAB GIVES DICK HIS OLD CLOTHES.]

Dab Kinzer’s sisters looked at one another in blank astonishment, and Samantha would have left the table if she had only finished her breakfast.

Pamela, as being nearest to Dab in age and sympathy, gave a very admiring look at her brother’s second “good fit,” and said nothing.

Even Keziah finally admitted, in her own mind, that such a change in Dabney’s appearance might have its advantages.  But Samantha inwardly declared war.

The young hero himself was hardly used to that second suit as yet, and felt anything but easy in it.

“I wonder,” he said to himself, “what Jenny Walters would think of me now?  Wonder if she’d know me?”

Not a doubt of it.  But, after he had finished his breakfast and gone out, his mother remarked: 

“It’s really all right, girls.  I almost fear I’ve been neglecting Dabney.  He isn’t a little boy any more.”

“He isn’t a man yet,” exclaimed Samantha, “and he talks slang dreadfully.”

“But then he does grow so!” remarked Keziah.

“Mother,” said Pamela, “couldn’t you get Dab to give Dick the slang, along with the old clothes?”

“We’ll see about it,” replied Mrs. Kinzer.

It was very plain that Dabney’s mother had begun to take in a new idea about her son.  It was not the least bit in the world unpleasant to find out that he was “growing in more ways than one,” and it was quite likely that she had indeed kept him too long in roundabouts.

CHAPTER III.

Dick Lee had been more than half right about the village being a dangerous place for him with such an unusual amount of clothing over his ordinary uniform.

The very dogs, every one of whom was an old acquaintance, barked at him on his way home that night; and, proud as were his ebony father and mother, they yielded to his earnest entreaties, first, that he might wear his present all the next day, and, second, that he might betake himself to the “bay,” early in the morning, and so keep out of sight “till he got used to it.”

The fault with Dab Kinzer’s old suit, after all, had lain mainly in its size rather than its materials, for Mrs. Kinzer was too good a manager to be really stingy.

Dick succeeded in reaching the boat-landing without falling in with any one who seemed disposed to laugh at him; but there, right on the wharf, was a white boy of about his own age, and he felt a good deal like backing out.