XXXIX. A HUNTING COAT OF FORMER DAYS.

One morning I saw my mother looking at my jacket. She appeared troubled and anxious. I could read her thoughts: she was thinking that I must soon have a new one, and of the means of getting it. We were so poor! She sighed as she looked at my worn-out jacket, and as she did so I coloured as if I had been found out in some grave fault. She then went to my father and consulted with him for a long while. After this consultation she went to her wardrobe—that wardrobe which was full of mysterious things—and from it she took a parcel, and laid it carefully on the table.

My father and I both came to the table, curious to see what was in the parcel: my mother took out the pins from the paper one by one, and put them in a little box. I felt very impatient to know what could be in that wonderful parcel, and I thought my mother’s fingers moved very slowly. At last she uncovered a coat, carefully folded up, which she at first took to the window to examine, and then spread out upon the table. This coat was a most wonderful and beautiful garment in my eyes; it was a green velvet hunting coat, with brass buttons. My mother smoothed it gently with her hand to get rid of any creases that there might be in it; then turning to my father she said, “This will do beautifully!”

I had never seen this coat before, it must have lain for many many years buried in my mother’s wardrobe: it was no doubt a relic of better days: those days that I had heard my father talk of when some old friend chanced to come and see him.

When I looked carefully at this wonderful coat, I discovered that it was made of the richest and softest velvet, and that the head of a fox was engraved upon each of the brass buttons. The fox was full face, standing out in relief from each of the buttons, his sharp nose and cunning eyes wonderfully true to nature. At sight of these buttons my admiration knew no bounds; my mother, smiling, placed her hand caressingly on my head and said, “Now thank your father, he is going to let me make this coat fit you, and it shall be yours!”

I jumped for joy, I turned head over heels, I thanked my father, I kissed my mother, I clapped my hands, and I determined that I would try hard to deserve all the kindness that my parents showed me. Yes, thought I to myself, I will use my fists even if only to prove that I am worthy to wear that splendid coat, which my father has worn, and which my dear mother is going to make fit me, with her own hands, and which has such grand buttons!