Amarilly of Clothes-line Alley

Gus with arm lovingly about the cow's neck walked home.

"Bossy," he said in gently reproaching tones, "how could you give me

such a skeer? I thought I'd lost you, and I'd hev sure missed you--you,

yerself--more'n I would the money your milk brings us."

Then for the first time, the lad's eyes noted the decorated horns.

"What in thunder--"

He began to unwind the ribbons of white cloth, the stringed remnants of

the surplice.

"Gracious Peter! It's the surplus! What will Amarilly say--and Lily

Rose? It's only fit fer carpet rags now. Well, if this ain't the end of

the surplus after all it has went through! I wonder what bossy wanted of

it? Thought jest cause she was a cow, she must be a cow ketcher, I

suppose."

Great was the joy of the Jenkinses at the restoration of the cow, but

there was grievous lament from Amarilly for the fate of the precious

garment.

"It was our friend--our friend in need!" she mourned.

"I'm so glad we hev a picter of it," said Lily Rose, gazing fondly at

the photograph of the Boarder in the saintly robes.

"I'll go and tell Miss King," said Amarilly the next morning. "She said

she felt that the surplice would come to some tragic end."

"It was a fitting fate for so mysterious a garment," commented Colette.

"You couldn't expect any ordinary, common-place ending for the surplice.

After officiating at funerals, weddings, shop-windows, theatres,

pawnshops, and bishops' dwellings, it could never have simply worn out,

or died of old age."

"I don't see," meditated Amarilly, "what possessed the cow. She's been

so gentle always, and then to fly to pieces that way, and riddle the

surplice to bits! It was lucky there was nothing else on the line."

"It's very simple," said Colette. "I suppose she wanted to go to the

train. Maybe she expected to meet a friend. And as nearly everyone else

had worn the surplice on special occasions, she thought she could do the

same; only, you see, never having been to church she didn't quite know

how to put it on, and I suppose got mad at it because it didn't fit her

and gave vent to her anger by trampling on it."

Amarilly's doleful little face showed no appreciation of this conceit.

"Don't look so glum, Amarilly. I have something to show you that will

please you."

She opened a desk and took a thick, white square envelope from it, and

handed it to the little girl.