"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."