"We got a train for a bit of the way, but mostly we came on our feet."
Oh, the dear, dear feet, so plucky and untiring! And how I loved the "we" and the "our"! He always has identified himself with his men, so that they know that he cares for them, and they would follow him, as his colonel put it, "anywhere and into anything."
And that day in his small childhood the little feet had a charm that for an instant brought quick hot tears into my eyes.
He was very shy, though sometimes he could be very bold—as when one day, coming into the dining-room and finding a certain important person sitting there, he fetched on his own account a box of Vafiadis and, thrusting them under the visitor's eyes, said coolly:
"'Ave a cigawette?"
At other times nothing could induce him to go into a room where there was someone who was a stranger to him.
His first experience of serious punishment came of this sensitiveness and shyness. A very well-known but decidedly ugly man was in the drawing-room, and the child, under pressure, went in to be seen of him. But when he caught sight of the visitor, his feelings overcame him.
"Shunny man! Ugly man!" he cried; and he turned and bolted.
And so sweet was that ugly man that he not only forgave him, but declared afterwards that it was the wretched little insulter's charm and beauty which had led him to think of marriage in the hope of having children of his own. But, as for me—I left the visitor to my husband's care, and, following the three-year-old sinner out of the room and upstairs to the nursery, whither he had fled, I administered personal chastisement.