He nodded.
"Leggings too!" and he stuck up one leg at a sudden right angle on to the bed; a rash proceeding, but the boy has a straight little figure, and with a hop or two he kept his balance.
"My dear Jack, they are grand. How warm they must keep your legs!"
He shook his beaver hat.
"No. They only tickles. That's what they do."
There was a pause. His Aunt remembered the old peevish ways. She did not want to encourage him to discard his winter leggings, and was doubtful what to say. But in a moment more his eyes shone, and his face took that effulgent expression which some children have when they are resolved upon being good.
"—and as I can't shake off the tickle, I have to bear it," added the little gentleman.
I call him the little gentleman advisedly. There is no stronger sign of high breeding in young people, than a cheerful endurance of the rubs of life. A temper that fits one's fate, a spirit that rises with the occasion. It is this kind of courage which the Gentlemen of England have shown from time immemorial, through peace and war, by land and sea, in every country and climate of the habitable globe. Jack is a child of that Empire on which the sun never sets, and if he live he is like to have larger opportunities of bearing discomfort than was afforded by the woolly worry of his bottle-green leggings. I am in good hopes that he will not be found wanting.
Some such thoughts, I believe, occurred to his Aunt.
"That's right, Jack. What a man you are!"