One summer--it was in his sixth year--they had all gone on a holiday to Tewkesbury, his father's old home; and he recalled quite clearly the close of a warm afternoon which he and his mother had spent there in a green meadow beyond the abbey church.
She had brought out a basket and cushion, and sat sewing, while Taffy played about and watched the haymakers at their work.

Behind them, within the great church, the organ was sounding; but by-and-by it stopped, and a door opened in the abbey wall, and his father came across the meadow toward them with his surplice on his arm.

And then Humility unpacked the basket and produced a kettle, a spirit-lamp, and a host of things good to eat.

The boy thought the whole adventure splendid.

When tea was done, he sprang up with one of those absurd notions which come into children's heads: "Now let's feed the poultry," he cried, and flung his last scrap of bun three feet in air toward the gilt weather-cock on the abbey tower.