“You shouldn’t, my dear,” said the landlady, piteously, as she stretched out her hands like a gigantic baby who wanted to be helped up.
Sydney’s instincts prompted him to rush on to his father’s small sitting-room, but politeness and the appeal of the lady compelled him to stay; and after he had raised her to her proper perpendicular, she smiled and cast her eyes over his uniform, making the boy colour like a girl.
“Well, you do look nice,” she said; “only don’t knock me down again. There, I’m not hurt. They’re quite new, ain’t they?”
Sydney nodded.
“I thought so, because you haven’t got them on quite right.”
Sydney stopped to hear no more, but ran on, checked himself, and tried to walk past three waiters in the entry with dignity.
He did not achieve this, because if he had the waiters would not have laughed and put their napkins to their mouths, on drawing back to let him pass.
“Oh, shouldn’t I like to!” he thought, as he set his teeth and clenched his fists.
He felt very miserable and as if he was being made a laughing-stock; in fact his sensations were exactly those of a sensitive lad who appears in uniform for the first time; and hence he was in anything but a peaceful state of mind as he dashed into the room where his uncle was waiting, to be greeted with a roar of laughter.
“What a time you have been, sir! Why, Syd, I don’t think much of your legs, and, hang it all, your belt’s too loose, and they don’t fit you. Bah! you haven’t half dressed yourself. Come here. Takes me back fifty years, boy, to see you like that.”