manage to get that poor fellow a tolerable breakfast on Saturday before
he goes? And if you could make him look a little more decent?'

Charles pulled his forelock and looked knowing. In fact, there was a
little plot among these good-natured boys, and Harold King was in it too,
though he was not of the Confirmation party, and said and thought he was
very glad of it. He did not want to bind himself to be so very good.
Silly boy; as if Baptism had not bound him already!

Mrs. Hayward put her head out as Paul passed her cottage, and called out,
'I say, you Paul, you come in to-morrow evening with our Charlie and Jim,
and I'll wash you when I washes them.'

Good Mrs. Hayward made a mistake that the more delicate-minded Mrs. King
would never have made. Perhaps if a pail of warm water and some soap had
been set before Paul, he might actually have washed himself; but he was
much too big and too shamefaced a lad to fancy sharing a family scrubbing
by a woman, whatever she might do to her own sons. But considering the
size of the Hayward cottage, and the way in which the family lived, this
sort of notion was not likely to come into the head of the good-natured
mother.

So she and her boys were much vexed when Paul did not make his
appearance, and she made a face of great disgust when Charles said,
'Never mind, Mother, my white frock will hide no end of dirt.'

'I shall have to wash it over again before you can wear it, I know,' said
Mrs. Hayward. 'Not as I grudges the trouble; he's a poor lost orphant,
that it's a shame to see so treated.'

Mrs. Hayward did not know that she was bestowing the cup of cold water,
as well as being literally ready to wash the feet of the poor disciple.

A clean body is a type and token of a pure mind; and though the lads of
Friarswood did not quite perceive this, there was a feeling about them of
there being something unnatural and improper, and a disgrace to
Friarswood, in any one going up to the Bishop in such a condition as
Paul. Especially, as Charles Hayward said, when he was the pick of the
whole lot. Perhaps Charles was right, for surely Paul was single-hearted
in his hope of walking straight to his one home, Heaven, and he had been
doing no other than bearing his cross, when he so patiently took the
being 'buffeted' when he did well, and faithfully served his froward
master.

But Paul was not to escape the outward cleansing, and from one of the
very last people from whom it w