"Let's go to-morrow instead, Humphie." Humphrey had turned round to get Miles's boots and stockings, and did not hear this last proposal. When he came back to the bed-side, to his horror, Miles had lain down again. "What is to be done?" he exclaimed in despair. A sudden thought struck him, and he went quickly off to the other end of the room. Miles was not quite asleep, and attracted by a clatter, he raised himself to see what his brother was about. "What are you going to do, Humphie?" he exclaimed, as he saw Humphrey coming slowly across the room with a great jug of water in his arms. "Why you see," said Humphrey in a loud whisper, and rather out of breath, for he was oppressed by the weight of the water jug, "the best way to wake people is to pour a jug of cold water suddenly on their face, and so----" "Oh! I'm quite awake now, Humphie; indeed," interrupted Miles, getting out of bed in a great hurry, "you needn't, really. Look at my eyes." And in great trepidation the child opened his large blue eyes to their fullest extent. Humphrey was satisfied, and put the jug down. Miles would have been happier to see it safely replaced on the distant wash-hand stand, and offered to help to carry it back, if his brother found it too heavy. He was not much reassured by Humphrey's answer: "It'll do very well there; and, besides, it's better to have it near, in case you get sleepy again." The toilette now began in earnest: Humphrey gave Miles his stockings to put on while he proceeded to dress himself, and was all ready but his jacket, when turning round he found Miles in great perplexity, with his toe unaccountably fixed in the place where his heel ought to be. "I can't get it out, Humphie!" "I must do it, I suppose," said the elder boy; and he seized the leg, nearly upsetting Miles as he did so, and proceeded to put on the stocking wrong side out. "It doesn't matter the least," he assured Miles, who was rather discomfited at the bits of thread, and general unfinished appearance of his leg. But what _did_ matter was, that the walking-boots had not, of course, come up from being cleaned. "Never mind," said Humphrey; "shoes will do." On came the delicate child's thin in-door shoes, without any reference to the heavy dew and long grass attendant upon mushroom hunting. Miles was then divested of his night-gown, and his under-clothes put on. All went on smoothly till the first tying of strings, and here Humphrey was completely at fault. It was no use. "Don't you think you could hold all your things together?" he suggested; "and then I'll pop on your blouse quick, and make the band very tight, to keep it all steady?" Miles agreed to this plan, as he did to all others, more especially as he found the alternative was the insertion of a huge pin, with which Humphrey offered to "make it all comfortable!" "I don't know how it is," said little Miles, shaking himself about, "but I don't feel as warm as usual."