I must go twice to church, as our Sunday custom was--a custom which she saw no good reason for me to break.

It is easy to smile at her punctiliousness on this score; but after all these years, and on the whole, I think she was right.

An unexpected compromise came to my rescue, however: Isaac Irvine's bees were in the parish of Cripple Charlie's father, within a stone's throw (by the bee-master's strong arm) of the church itself, which was a small minster among the moors.

Here I promised faithfully to attend Evening Prayer, for which we should be in time; and I started, by Isaac Irvine's side, on my first real "expedition" on the first Sunday in August, with my mother's blessing and a threepenny-bit with a hole in it, "in case of a collection." We dined before we started, I with the rest, and Isaac in our kitchen; but I had no great appetite--I was too much excited--and I willingly accepted some large sandwiches made with thick slices of home-made bread and liberal layers of home-made potted meat, "in case I should feel hungry" before I got there.
It pains me to think how distressed my mother was because I insisted on carrying the sandwiches in a red and orange spotted handkerchief, which I had purchased with my own pocket-money, and to which I was deeply attached, partly from the bombastic nature of the pattern, and partly because it was big enough for any grown-up man.

"It made me look like a tramping sailor," she said.