don't give a--hum!--how you spell it. There she goes.
Done. 'Yours respectfully, Toby Littleback.' It's blotted up some, by
crackey, that's a fact; but I ain't a-goin' to write all that over
again, not by a jugful." And he took out his handkerchief and wiped the
perspiration from his forehead.

"He's a Churchwarden," insisted Freddie, swallowing the last of the
lemonade after the last of the cake.

"All right," said Toby, "have it your own way. But a sextant's as good
as a Churchwarden, in _my_ opinion, any day of the week,--except Sunday,
of course."

Aunt Amanda inspected the letter, and declared herself horrified by the
blots; but Toby positively refused to go through that exhausting labor
again, so she passed it grudgingly, and handed it to Freddie in an
envelope, and told him to give it to his mother as soon as he got home.

"Do you want some more cake and lemonade?" said she.

"Yes'm," said he.

"Well, you won't get it, so trot along home."

In the shop Mr. Toby showed him the churchwarden pipes in the show-case.
Freddie wondered how it would taste to smoke some of that magic tobacco
in the Chinaman's head in a churchwarden pipe.

As he passed the church on his way home, he looked for the fat old man
who usually sat in his chair tilted back against the wall, but he was
not there. Freddie wished to ask him about those noises up in the tower
when Mr. Punch and his father were having their high jinks; he had never
been able to screw up his courage to the point of asking about this, but
now that he was grown up he thought he might be able.

He gave the letter to his mother, and she read it; but she said nothing
to him about it. When his father came home in the evening, she showed
the letter to him, and they talked about it, and Freddie could not
understand very well what they were saying. Finally his father said:

"Well, I don't think there would be any harm in it."

"I suppose not," said his mother. "I'll see them in the morning. He had
better wear his Sunday suit and his new shoes."

This was bad, because it sounded like Sunday-school, and the shoes
squeaked. Freddie thought he had better change the subject, so he said:

"I'm grown up. I can say Freddie. Mr. Toby says so."

His father laughed, but his mother took him up in her arms and hugged
him close to her breast.

The next day was in fact Saturday, and after lunch Freddie's mother
helped him, or rather forced him, into his Sunday suit and his ne