When I put this momentous question we were in a train, being bound on a visit to Frederick at his preparatory school.  A sudden doubt had just assailed me as to my presentability.  Should I, as a father, be looked upon as a credit or a disgrace to my son?  Francesca took some time before she answered my question.  Then she spoke.

“Your hat,” she said, “is well enough.”

“I see what it is,” I said; “you think I ought to have worn a top-hat.  There are still occasions when a top-hat may, nay, must be worn; and this, you think, is one of them.  There are solemnities and venerations that only a top-hat can inspire in the naturally irreverent mind of youth.  A father in any other hat is a ridiculously youthful object and has no business to inflict himself on his son.  Very well.  I would not for worlds spoil Frederick’s half-holiday by shaming him in the eyes of his schoolfellows.”

“What do you propose to do about it, then?  You can’t alter your hat now.”

“No,” I said, “I can’t; but I can get out of the train at the next station and go home and leave you in your comparative spickness and your relative spanness to spend your afternoon with the boy.  Or, stay, there must be a shop in Belfield where top-hats can be bought.  It is a cathedral city and possesses dignitaries of the Church who still wear top-hats, and——­”

“But those are special top-hats.  You couldn’t go to Frederick in a bishop’s hat, now could you?”

“No-o-o,” I said doubtfully, “perhaps I couldn’t.  But suppose I wore the gaiters too—­wouldn’t that make it all right?”

“I should like,” she said, “to see Frederick’s face on perceiving the new bishop.”

“Francesca,” I said, “you talk as if no boys ever had bishops for their fathers.  Let me assure you, on the contrary, that there are many bishops who have large families of both sexes.  I once stayed with a bishop, and I never heard anybody attempt to make a mockery of his gaiters.”

“But they were his own.  He couldn’t be a bishop without them.”

“That fact doesn’t render them immune from laughter.  My present hat, for instance, is my own, and yet you have been laughing at it ever since I called your attention to it.”

“Not at all; I have been admiring it.  I said it was well enough, and so it is.  What more can you want?”

“I only hope,” I said, “that Frederick will think so too.  It would be too painful to dash the cup of half-holiday joy from a boy’s lips by wearing an inappropriate hat.”

“You’re too nervous altogether about the impression you’re going to make on Frederick.  Take example by me.  I’ve got a hat on.”

“You have,” I said fervently.  “It has grazed my face more than once.”

“It is feeding,” she said, “on your damask cheek.  But I’m quite calm in spite of it.”

“But then,” I said, “you never knew Rowell.”

“No.  Who was he?”

“Rowell,” I said, “was a schoolfellow of mine, and he had a father.”