His happiness appears in his moody and charming face, his
ambition in his dumbness, and the hopes of his life to come in ungainly
bearing. How does so much heart, how does so much sweetness, all
unexpressed, appear? For it is not only those who know him well that
know the child's heart; strangers are aware of it. This, which he would
not reveal, is the only thing that is quite unmistakable and quite
conspicuous.
What he thinks that he turns visibly to the world is a sense of humour,
with a measure of criticism and of indifference. What he thinks the
world may divine in him is courage and an intelligence. But carry
himself how he will, he is manifestly a tender, gentle, and even
spiritual creature, masculine and innocent--"a nice boy." There is no
other way of describing him than that of his own brief language.
ILLNESS
The patience of young children in illness is a commonplace of some little
books, but none the less a fresh fact. In spite of the sentimental,
children in illness remain the full sources of perpetual surprises. Their
self-control in real suffering is a wonder. A little turbulent girl,
brilliant and wild, and unaccustomed, it might be thought, to deal in any
way with her own impulses--a child whose way was to cry out, laugh,
complain, and triumph without bating anything of her own temperament, and
without the hesitation of a moment, struck her face, on a run, against a
wall and was cut and in a moment overwhelmed with pain and covered with
blood.
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