But it was to his father only that he told his secret.
It was a queer secret, and a very real trouble, too, I can tell you.
Part of it was that Master Sunshine was just the least bit bow-legged.
Of course there could not be much of a secret about that. Lots of people knew it quite well. In fact, if you looked carefully at the well-shaped limbs in the trim blue stockings and neat knicker-bockers, you could easily see that the legs curved slightly outwards.
But the real secret—the real heart and soul of the matter—was that being bow-legged was a great, great grief to Master Sunshine. No one but his father ever knew this—not even his mother, or Almira Jane, or Lucy. It was too sore a subject to speak of freely.
It was on the day when he first put on trousers that his troubles began. It seemed to him that people began then to make such odd remarks about him; and the strangest thing of all was that they would seem to quite forget that he heard every word they said, and that they never seemed to understand how they were hurting his feelings.
For a time he solved the difficulty in a clever way. He begged his mother to make him some loose sailor suits with long bagging legs.
They served their purpose well, and so long as they lasted no one ever spoke of the tender subject that he wished to avoid. But still he never felt comfortable about them in his mind.
It seemed such a cowardly thing to hide his legs like that, and he did so want to be manly in all his ways.
So, after a long talk one day with his father, as they sauntered hand in hand down a shady country road, with Gyp sporting and playing alongside, he decided to face the trouble bravely, and wear knickerbockers like other boys of his age. And, instead of sulking or fretting about what he could not help, he set himself to making allowances for other people.