learn to do it just right. There were creases down the arms of
Mr. Toby's coat and down the front of his trouser-legs. A yellow silk
handkerchief showed itself, not boldly, but quietly, from his breast
pocket.

As he let Freddie in, and in doing so turned his back to Aunt Amanda,
she screamed and cried out:

"Toby! Look behind you! Merciful heavens!"

Freddie, in the midst of his admiration of the magnificent creature, saw
him whirl about and look behind himself in alarm. His aunt pointed at
his coat and said sternly, "Come here."

Freddie saw on the back of Mr. Toby's coat, near the bottom, as he
whirled about, a little square white tag.

Mr. Toby backed up to his aunt, and stood before her, trying to look at
his back over his shoulder, while she took her scissors and clipped the
threads by which the white tag was sewed to the back of his coat. She
held up the tag; it had numbers printed and written on it.

"Now ain't that just like you, Toby Littleback," she said, "going out
with your tag on your back, with your size on it and your height and
age, too, for all I know, for anybody to see that you've got on a
splittin' brand new suit right out o' the shop. If you'd 'a' gone out
with that on your back, I'd 'a' died with shame right here in this
chair. Ain't you even able to dress yourself?"

"By crickets, that _would_ 'a' been bad," said Toby, considerably upset.
"However, you caught it in time, so there ain't no use cryin' over it.
Good-bye, Aunt; come along, Freddie, or we'll be late."

"Ain't you goin' to wear a hat?" said Aunt Amanda. "I declare the man's
so excited he don't know what he's doing."

"Blamed if I didn't come near going without a hat," said Toby. "Here she
is."

He produced his hat from a cupboard in the room, and put it on. It would
have been a pity indeed for him to have gone without it. It was a white
derby; yes, a _white_ derby. It was the kind of a hat which was known in
that city as a "pinochle"; pronounced "pea-knuckle" by all well-informed
boys. With the mauve suit and the hand-painted necktie and the
whitewashed fence, the white derby set him off to perfection, especially
as he wore it a little towards the back of his head, so as to show the
loveliest part of the plastered curl of his hair on the forehead. Aunt
Amanda could not restrain her admiration.

"You'll do now," she said. "I don't know that I ever seen you look so
genteel before."

Toby, in the embarrassment of being cons