but all
children, you understand? Each child finished up by leap-frogging
over the stone; and when he'd done that he'd run away and be lost
among the trees. I wanted to follow, but somehow I had to stand
there counting. . . . And that's all there is _to_ it," concluded
Corona, "'cept that I'd found the way to go to sleep."

Nurse Branscome laughed, and suggested that no time should be lost in
going off to call on Mr. Colling, the tailor, and begging or
borrowing a scrap of the claret-coloured Beauchamp cloth. Within ten
minutes--for she understood the impatience of children--they had
started on this small expedition. They found in Mr. Colling a most
human tailor. He not only gave them a square yard of cloth, unsoiled
and indeed brand-new, but advised Nurse Branscome learnedly on the
cutting-out. There were certain peculiarities of cut in a Beauchamp
gown: it was (he could tell them) a unique garment in its way, and he
the sole repository of its technical secret. On their way back
Corona summarised him as "a truly Christian tradesman."

So the miniature gown was cut out, shaped, and sewn, after the
unsuspecting Timothy had been measured for it on a pretence of
Corona's that she wanted to discover how much he had grown during his
rest-cure. (For I regret to say that, as one subterfuge leads to
another, she had by this time descended to feigning a nervous
breakdown for him, due to his outgrowing his strength.) Best of all,
and when the gown was finished, Nurse Branscome produced from her
workbox a lucky threepenny-bit, and sewed it upon the breast to
simulate a Beauchamp rose.

When Corona's own garments arrived--when they were indued and she
stood up in them, a Greycoat at length from head to heel--to hide her
own feelings she had to invent another breakdown (emotional this
time) for Timothy as she dangled the gown in front of him.

"Be a man, Timmy!" she exhorted him.

Having clothed him and clasped him to her breast, she turned to Nurse
Branscome, who had been permitted, as indeed she deserved, to witness
the _coup de theatre_.

"If you _don't_ mind, Branny, I think we'll go off somewhere--
by ourselves."

She carried the doll off to the one unkempt corner of Mr.
Battershall's garden, where in the shadow of a stone dovecot,
ruinated and long disused, a rustic bench stood deep in nettles.
On this she perched herself, and sat with legs dangling while she
discoursed with Timothy of their new promotion.