ticoats and you could wear them for dressing-gowns,
we'd have plenty. Well, look at _this_! Here's a velvet--cerise! What a
glorious, impossible colour! And here's the lingerie frock; that's not
so bad; I really think it will stand a couple of launderings before it
falls to pieces in my hands. And here's the evening coat--pale gray with
fox trimmings--and she's fallen foul of some ink or something, and the
cleaner couldn't get it all out. Father Davy, look!"

"It seems to me," said Mr. Warne in his gentle tones, which were yet not
without more firmness than one might expect from so frail a person,
"that I have heard somewhere a homely proverb to the effect that it is
not quite in good taste to----"

"'_Look a gift horse in the mouth,_'" finished Georgiana. Her eyes were
rebellious. "And there's another: '_Beggars mustn't be choosers._' Yes,
I know. Only, semi-annually I certainly do experience a burning wish
that my dear rich relations were persons with a trifle keener sense of
discernment as to which of their old clothes would be most appreciated
by their poor cousins. They must now and then, Father Davy, wear
something sensible. They must have morning clothes and street
clothes--adorable ones. Why do they send only the worldly clothes to the
manse? And why--_why_ do they never put in so much as one of Uncle
Thomas's discarded cravats for the Little Minister himself?"

"Your Uncle Thomas and I may possibly have different tastes in the
matter of neckwear," replied Mr. Warne with such gravity of manner but
such a sparkle of humour in his blue-gray eyes that his daughter laughed
in spite of herself. "Come, come, dear, is there nothing you can approve
among all those rich materials? You might make me innumerable cravats,
and I am such a fop I could wear a fresh one each day--to please you."

"Father Davy!" Georgiana sat back on her heels. She had slipped her
bared arms into the armholes of the sleeveless white "fluff-and-flimsy"
evening frock, and the "sparklers" of the low-cut bodice now framed her
blue-print clad shoulders with an astonishing effect of incongruity. "I
have a wonderful inspiration. Let's ask Jeannette out here for a
visit--an object-lesson as to the state of life whereunto the country
cousins have been called. She hasn't seen me in ten years, and all I
remember of her is a fluffy, yellow-haired girl with a sniffly cold in
her head. What do you say, Father Davy? Shall we ask her?"

Her father's gaze, q