To do so would mar the integrity of his
reserve. If he would do much rather than answer questions, he would
suffer something rather than ask them.
He loves his father and a friend of his father's, and he pushes them, in
order to show it without compromising his temperament.
He is a partisan in silence. It may be guessed that he is often occupied
in comparing other people with his admired men. Of this too he says
little, except some brief word of allusion to what other men do _not_ do.
When he speaks it is with a carefully shortened vocabulary. As an author
shuns monotony, so does the boy shun change. He does not generally talk
slang; his habitual words are the most usual of daily words made useful
and appropriate by certain varieties of voice. These express for him all
that he will consent to communicate. He reserves more by speaking dull
words with zeal than by using zealous words that might betray him. But
his brevity is the chief thing; he has almost made an art of it.
He is not "merry." Merry boys have pretty manners, and it must be owned
that this boy's manners are not pretty. But if not merry, he is happy;
there never was a more untroubled soul. If he has an almost grotesque
reticence, he has no secrets. Nothing that he thinks is very much
hidden. Even if he did not push his father, it would be evident that the
boy loves him; even if he never laid his hand (and this little thing he
does rarely) on his friend's shoulder, it would be plain that he loves
his friend.
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