y? But
I can't conceive what made you put that child into knickerbockers, he
can't keep his stockings up."

"Yes, I can," said Christopher, calmly, looking at his legs.

"Then what have you got 'em down for?" shouted Father.

"They're not all down," said Chris, his head still bent over his
knees, till I began to fear he would have a fit.

"One of 'em is, anyhow. I saw it at prayers. Pull it up."

"Two of them are," said Christopher, never lifting his admiring gaze
from his stockings. "Two of them are down, and two of them are up,
quite up, quite tidy."

Dear Father rubbed his glass and put it back into his eye.

"Why, how many stockings have you got on?"

"Four," said Chris, smiling serenely at his legs; "and it isn't
Bessy's fault. I put 'em all on myself, every one of them."

At this minute James brought in the papers, and Father only laughed,
and said, "I never saw such a chap," and began to read. He is very
fond of Christopher, and Chris is never afraid of him.

I was going out of the room, and Chris followed me into the hall, and
drew my attention to his legs, which were clothed in four stockings;
one pair, as he said, being drawn tidily up over his knees, the other
pair turned down with some neatness in folds a little above his
ankles.

"Mary," he said, "I'm contented now."

"I'm very glad, Chris. But do leave off staring at your legs. All the
blood will run into your head."

"I wish things wouldn't always get into _my_ head, and nobody else's,"
said Chris, peevishly, as he raised it; but when he looked back at his
stockings, they seemed to comfort him again.

"Mary, I've found another name for myself."

"Dear Chris! I'm so glad."

"It's a real one, out of the old book. I thought of it entirely by
myself."

"Good Dwarf. What is your name?"

"_Hose-in-Hose_," said Christopher, still smiling down upon his legs.

CHAPTER IX.

Alas for the hose-in-hose!

I laughed over Christopher and his double stockings, and I danced for
joy when Bessy's aunt told me that she had got me a fine lot of roots
of double cowslips. I never guessed what misery I was about to suffer,
because of the hose-in-hose.

I had almost forgotten that Bessy's aunt knew double cowslips. After I
became Traveller's Joy I was so busy with wayside planting that I had
thought less of my own garden than usual, and had allowed Arthur to do
what he liked with it as part of the Earthly Paradise (and he was
always changing h