t to get wet."

Rollo jumped up, and said, "Let us go and see."

They went up garret, and found, hanging up, quite a quantity of old
clothes. Some belonged to Jonas, some to himself, and they selected the
worst ones they could find, and carried them down into the shed.

Then Rollo went and called his mother to come out, and he asked her if she
thought it would hurt those old clothes to get wet. She laughed, and said
no; and said she would go and ask his father to let him go out with them.

In a few minutes, she came back, and said that his father consented, but
that he must go himself, and put on the old clothes, without troubling his
mother, and then, when he came back, he must rub himself dry with a towel,
and put on his common dress, and put the wet ones somewhere in the shed to
dry; and when they were dry, put them all back carefully in their places.

[Illustration: Work in the Rain.]

Rollo ran up to his room, and rigged himself out, as well as he could,
putting one of Jonas's great coats over him, and wearing an old
broad-brimmed straw hat on his head. Thus equipped, he took his hoe, and
sallied forth in the rain.

At first he thought it was good fun; but, in about half an hour, he began
to be tired, and to feel very uncomfortable. The rain spattered in his
face, and leaked down the back of his neck; and then the ground was wet
and slippery; and once or twice he almost gave up in despair.

He persevered, however, and before dark he got it done. He raked off all
the weeds, and smoothed the ground over carefully, for he knew his father
would come out to examine it as soon as the storm was over. Then he went
in, rubbed himself dry, changed his clothes, and went and took his seat by
the kitchen fire.

His father came out a few minutes after, and said, "Well, Rollo, have you
got through?"

"Yes, sir," said Rollo.

"Well, I am _very_ glad of it. I was afraid you would have lost your
garden. As it is, perhaps it will do you good."

"How?" said Rollo. "What good?"

"It will teach you, I hope, that it is dangerous to neglect or postpone
doing one's duty. We cannot always depend on repairing the mischief. When
the proper opportunity is once lost, it may never return."

Rollo said nothing, but he thought he should remember the lesson as long
as he lived.

He remembered it for the rest of that summer, at any rate, and did not run
any more risks. He kept his ground very neat, and his father did not have
to gi