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.