"How does that begin?" David asked. He could not think what it was that began.
"How does what begin?" Mother inquired.
And that was not nice nor reasonable of her. Mothers are made to answer questions, not to ask questions, and they are so discouraging when they can't understand about being waylaid! David felt abused, but he decided to have one more try at her. Then, if she didn't give him satisfaction, he would know that Four Years Old was all a humbug. As he looked longingly into her face, his words faltered, as though he were again expecting disappointment.
"Will he—will he wear his big, shiny hat when he does it?"
Into Mother's face came a puzzled, half knowing look. She recalled the admiration inspired in a certain little boy by a certain abominable top hat that a certain doctor had once worn to a certain annual meeting of the State Medical Society. But this was the extent of her knowledge.
"When he does what?" she asked.
The little boy's lip trembled, and he turned away his face. He saw it wasn't any use. Mother didn't understand; she evidently hadn't tried. It was plain that he was not four years old; he was only three. It is very hard on little boys to be only that old when they have made up their minds to be four. So, when David was being dressed, he suffered all the while with a severe case of what is commonly called pouts, but which in reality is something much sadder.
"My, my!" said Mother, as she drew a stocking over the pink toes of his right foot, "one mustn't look like that on his birthday."
"It is not my birthday," he said, not impertinently, but politely and woefully.
Even a pair of new shoes did not prove that this was his birthday, and yet they helped to prove it. One gets them at such times as Christmas and birthdays, and such a delightful squeak was in these shoes that David could scarcely eat his breakfast for wanting to walk about in them. If a circus should come to town, he would now be ready for it; he had the shoes. And besides, there were tassels on them—wonderful tassels. It is much easier to be a brave soldier-man if they have tassels.