“Oh, mammy dear!” he implored, “if you’d ever in your life been a boy, you’d know how I feel when I look out of the window! If you’ll let me out for just one little hour, right in the middle of the day, I’ll put on my rubber-boots, and my overcoat, and my fur cap, and my ear-tabs, and wind my neck all up in Tiny’s red scarf, and not stand still one single moment—oh, please, please! They’re just building the tower!”
“Poor Johnny!” said Tiny, with much sympathy, “would it hurt him that way, mamma?”
“Yes, dear, I’m afraid it would,” said Mrs. Leslie, and turning to Johnny, she asked, “My Johnny, were you quite in earnest, when you said you would try to win back my sleeve?”
“Why mammy! of course I was!” he answered, opening his eyes very wide, and for a moment forgetting his woes. No opportunity which he considered large enough had yet occurred, for him to try to win back his mother’s “silken sleeve,” which he had worn twisted around his hat to show that he meant to render her knightly service, and which he had given back to her the day after the circus, because he felt that he was unworthy to wear it, and he often looked at it sorrowfully as it hung, where he had placed it, above his mother’s picture, in his little room.
“Very well,” she said, gently pulling him down upon her lap, and turning his face away from the distracting window. “Imagine that you are really a knight, and that you are storm bound in my castle, as the foreign knight was in Sintram’s. You’d be too polite, in that case, I hope, to be grumbling and howling because you were compelled to pass a whole day in the charming society of the lady of the castle—now, wouldn’t you?”
“Well, yes, mamma, I suppose I should,” admitted Johnny, reluctantly, “but somehow it doesn’t seem exactly the same thing. You see, the snow may all be melted before you let me out again, and when the real old knights were storm bound, or anything, they always knew that their enemies and battles and things would keep!”
“Very well then,” replied his mother, promptly, “that gives you a chance to be just so much more knightly than the ‘real old knights’ were! And if you don’t give another howl, or scowl, or grumble, all day, but are my very best Johnny, instead of my second best or third best, I’ll twist my sleeve around your new school cap this very night!”
“Oh, mammy! will I really and truly be winning it, that way?” asked Johnny, eagerly.