and an extra blanket, from being the ministers of one's comfort, become
the stern arbiters of one's fate. Spring cleaning--which is something
like what it would be to build, paint, and furnish a house, and to "do
it at home"--takes place as naturally as the season it celebrates; but
if you want the front door kept open after the usual hour for drawing
the bolts and hanging the robbers' bell, it's odds if the master of the
house has not an apoplectic fit, and if servants of twelve and fourteen
years' standing do not give warning.

And what is difficult on week-days is on Sundays next door to
impossible, for obvious reasons.

But one's parents, though they have their little ways like other
people, are, as a rule--oh, my heart! made sadder and wiser by the
world's rough experiences, bear witness!--very indulgent; and after a
good many ups and downs, and some compromising and coaxing, I got my
way.

On one point my mother was firm, and I feared this would be an
insuperable difficulty. 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