a good many of your
things are made by Mrs. Baggage?"

"Nurse Bundle makes my shirts, Damer," said I.

"It's all the same," said Damer. "I knew it was connected with a
_parcel_ somehow. Well, the _Package_ patterns are very pretty, no
doubt, but I think it's time you were properly rigged out."

Which was duly done; and when holidays came and the scandalized Mrs.
Bundle asked what I had done "with them bran-new fine linen shirts,"
and where "them rubbishing cotton rags" had come from that I brought
in their place, I could only inform her, with a feeble imitation of
Leo's lofty coolness, that I had used the first to clean Damer's
lamp, and that the second were the "correct thing."

One day I said to him, "I don't know why, Damer, but you always make
me think of a vision of one of the Greek heroes when I see you walking
in the playing-fields."

I believe my simply-spoken compliment deeply gratified him; but he
only said, like Mr. Clerke, "You _do_ say the oddest things, little
'un!"

CHAPTER XXIV

COLLECTIONS--LEO'S LETTER--NURSE BUNDLE AND SIR LIONEL

If Nurse Bundle hoped that when I went to school an end would be put
to the "collections" which troubled her tidy mind, she was much
deceived. Neither Leo nor I were bookworms, and we were not by any
means so devoted as some boys to games and athletics. But for
collections of all kinds we had a fancy that almost amounted to mania.

Our natural history manias in their respective directions came upon us
like fevers. We "sickened" at the sight of somebody else's collection,
or because we had been reading about butterflies, or birds' eggs, or
water-plants, as the case might be. When "the complaint" was "at its
height," we lived only for specimens; we gave up leisure, sleep, and
pocket-money to our collection; we made notes and memoranda in our
grammars and lexicons that had no classical reference. We sent letters
to country newspapers which never appeared, and asked questions that
met with no reply. We were apt, also, to recover from these attacks,
leaving Nurse Bundle burdened with boxes or folios of dry, dusty
broken fragments of plants and insects, which we did not touch, but
which she was strictly forbidden to destroy. We pursued our fancies
during the holidays. I have now a letter that I got from Damer after
my fourth half:

"London.

"MY DEAR REGIE,--

"_Eureka_! What do you think? My poor governor collected
moths. I bullied my guardian t