As soon as he got past his toddle-days he loved to walk about everywhere and see everything.
The world was full of the most wonderful things; there was a pigsty in which lived a family of little pigs with curly tails. They used to squeak "Good-morning" to him every time he passed by.
He loved their curly tails, and often tried to make Alexander's tail like theirs, but it was of no use. It either stood straight up on end or else disappeared between his legs.
It was fine, too, to see the geese marching along like soldiers with the old gander at their head; to watch the old hen fussing and clucking after her little fluffy chicks, who would never come home when they were told—"Like naughty little boys, you know," said Nurse.
It would take hours to tell you all the things Alexander and he saw together—the animals, the birds, the trees, the flowers; and they all loved him. But he never saw the fairies—though they often waved their little hands to him; and Puck sometimes rode on Alexander's back through the woods and led them to all the prettiest spots—but George never knew.
By and by, when they had grown up a little more, and George was in sailor trousers, while Alexander had a great big bark which quite made you jump the first time you heard it, Father and Mother began to wonder what George would be when he became a man.
He loved playing at soldiers, and had boxes and boxes full of them which Grandfather and Grandmother, uncles and aunts, and other kind people gave him from time to time. He played with them on the nursery floor, up and down stairs until the housemaid, Anne, fell over them, on his bed when he ought to have been asleep, until Father said: "Ah, the boy will be a general and win great battles when he grows up!"
"No!" answered Mother. "George is born for something better than that."
He knew all about everything in the shop windows, better than even the people to whom the shops belonged.