The day had looked showery, but the sun was now shining very brightly, and so Ransey Tansey laid dinner out of doors on the grass.
As far as curiosity went, Babs was quite on an equality with her sex, and the meal finished, and the bones eaten by Bob, she wanted to know at once what the man with the pretty buttons had brought.
Ransey’s eyes, as well as his sister’s, were very large, but they grew bigger when that big parcel was opened.
There was a note from Miss Scragley herself right on the top, and this was worded as delicately, and with apparently as much fear of giving offence, as if Ransey had been the son of a real captain, instead of a canal bargee.
Why, here was a complete outfit: two suits of nice brown serge for Ransey himself, stockings and light shoes, to say nothing of real Baltic shirts, a neck-tie, and sailor’s cap.
“She’s oceans too good to live, that lady is!” exclaimed Ransey, rapturously.
“Me see!—me see! Babs wants pletty tlothes.”
“Yes, dear Babs, look! There’s pretty clothes.”
That crimson frock would match Babs’s rosy cheeks and yellow curly hair “all to little bits,” as Ransey expressed it.
After all the things had been admired over and over again, they were refolded and put carefully away in father’s strong locker.