The Little White Bird quotes

She has been putting qualities into David, altering him, turning him forever on a lathe since the day she first knew him, and indeed long before, and all so deftly that he is still called a child of nature.

When you release David’s hand he is immediately lost like an arrow from the bow.

No sooner do you cast eyes on him than you are thinking of birds. It is difficult to believe that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always seems to have alighted there:

When you release David’s hand he is immediately lost like an arrow from the bow.

No sooner do you cast eyes on him than you are thinking of birds.

It is difficult to believe that he walks to the Kensington Gardens; he always seems to have alighted there: and were I to scatter crumbs I opine he would come and peck. This is not what he set out to be;

“Heaven help her,” I said, “if she be not dearer than that.”

Heaven help all mothers if they be not really dears, for their boy will certainly know it in that strange short hour of the day when every mother stands revealed before her little son.

That dread hour ticks between six and seven; when children go to bed later the revelation has ceased to come. He is lapt in for the night now and lies quietly there, madam, with great, mysterious eyes fixed upon his mother.

“You were a little unjust to me today about the apple; were you not, mother?”

Stand there, woman, by the foot of the bed and cross your hands and answer him.

“Yes, my son, I was. I thought—”

Clearly preparing for our meeting. She has also said, I learn, that I shall not think so much of her when she is fifty-two, meaning that she will not be so pretty then. So little does the sex know of beauty.

Surely a spirited old lady may be the prettiest sight in the world.

For my part, I confess that it is they, and not the young ones, who have ever been my undoing. Just as I was about to fall in love I suddenly found that I preferred the mother.

Just as I was about to fall in love I suddenly found that I preferred the mother. Indeed, I cannot see a likely young creature without impatiently considering her chances for, say, fifty-two.

Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then.

If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been gathering in your face. But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.

Oh, you mysterious girls, when you are fifty-two we shall find you out; you must come into the open then. If the mouth has fallen sourly yours the blame: all the meannesses your youth concealed have been gathering in your face.

But the pretty thoughts and sweet ways and dear, forgotten kindnesses linger there also, to bloom in your twilight like evening primroses.

Is it not strange that, though I talk thus plainly to David about his mother, he still seems to think me fond of her? How now, I reflect, what sort of bumpkin is this, and perhaps I say to him cruelly:

I fall to wondering what they will look like when they grow up.

What a ludicrous difference do these two nobodies make to each other. You can see that they are to be married when he has twopence.

Thus I have not an atom of sympathy with this girl, to whom London is famous only as the residence of a young man who mistakes her for someone else, but her happiness had become part of my repast at two p.m., and when one …

Thursday came, when I prayed that there might be an end of this annoyance, but no, neither of them appeared on that acquainted ground. Had they changed their post-office? No, for her eyes were red every day, and heavy was her foolish little heart.

Love had put out his lights, and the little nursery governess walked in darkness.

I felt I could complain to the committee.

All in vain.

She wants to be loved; can’t do without love from morning till night; never knew how little a woman needs till she lost that little.

They are all like this.

No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away like two gleeful children to cook them. I followed, hoping to trace them to their home, but they soon outdistanced me, and that night I composed the following aphorism:

It is idle to attempt to overtake a pretty young woman carrying pork chops.

I was now determined to be done with her. First, however, to find out their abode, which was probably within easy distance of the shop. I even conceived them lured into taking their house by the advertisement, “Conveniently situated for the Pork Emporium.”

Well, one day—now this really is romantic and I am rather proud of it. My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by an anxiously polite street between which and mine are little yards called, I think, gardens.

They are so small that if you have the tree your neighbour has the shade from it.

I was looking out at my back window on the day we have come to when whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens.

I was chagrined, and then I insisted stoutly with myself that, as it was not Mary, it must be Mary’s jacket. I had never seen her wear such a jacket, mind you, yet I was confident, I can’t tell why.

Do clothes absorb a little of the character of their wearer, so that I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry?

If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of her presence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets. Or perhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in little tucks of herself.

On avowing that I wanted a space, I was admitted by an elderly, somewhat dejected looking female, whose fine figure was not on scale with her surroundings. Perhaps my face said so, for her first remark was explanatory.

“They get me cheap,” she said, “because I drink.”

I bowed, and we passed on to the drawing-room. I forget whether I have described Mary’s personal appearance, but if so you have a picture of that sunny drawing-room. My first reflection was, How can she have found the money to pay for it all!

She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her. “Forbear, ma’am,” I cried with authority, “I prefer to believe in that bag.

How much to be pitied, ma’am, are those who have lost faith in everything.

” I think all the pretty things that the little nursery governess had made out of nothing squeezed my hand for letting the chandelier off.

There came a night when the husband was alone in that street waiting. He can do nothing for you now, little nursery governess, you must fight it out by yourself; when there are great things to do in the house the man must leave.

Oh, man, selfish, indelicate, coarse-grained at the best, thy woman’s hour has come; get thee gone.

He slouches from the house, always her true lover I do believe, chivalrous, brave, a boy until tonight; but was he ever unkind to her? It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of an unkindness to stalk the street with him tonight?

but was he ever unkind to her? It is the unpardonable sin now; is there the memory of an unkindness to stalk the street with him tonight? And if not an unkindness, still might he not sometimes have been a little kinder?

Shall we make a new rule of life from tonight: always to try to be a little kinder than is necessary?

Poor youth, she would come to the window if she were able, I am sure, to sign that the one little unkindness is long forgotten, to send you a reassuring smile till you and she meet again;

Ah, no, that was for yesterday; it is too late now. He wanders the streets thinking of her tonight, but she has forgotten him.

In her great hour the man is nothing to the woman; their love is trivial now.

He and I were on opposite sides of the street, now become familiar ground to both of us, and divers pictures rose before me in which Mary A⸺ walked. Here was the morning after my only entry into her house.

Poor boy, his wife has quite forgotten him and his trumpery love. If she lives she will come back to him, but if she dies she will die triumphant and serene.

Life and death, the child and the mother, are ever meeting as the one draws into harbour and the other sets sail.

They exchange a bright “All’s well” and pass on.

Life and death, the child and the mother, are ever meeting as the one draws into harbour and the other sets sail. They exchange a bright “All’s well” and pass on.

The only ghosts, I believe, who creep into this world, are dead young mothers, returned to see how their children fare.

There is no other inducement great enough to bring the departed back. They glide into the acquainted room when day and night, their jailers, are in the grip, and whisper, “How is it with you, my child?”

All our notions about ghosts are wrong.

It is nothing so petty as lost wills or deeds of violence that brings them back, and we are not nearly so afraid of them as they are of us.

One by one the lights of the street went out, but still a lamp burned steadily in the little window across the way.

He would draw back from them as ill-omened things, and next moment he was going over them to himself like a child at lessons. A child! In that short year she had made him entirely dependent on her.

It is ever thus with women: their first deliberate act is to make their husband helpless. There are few men happily married who can knock in a nail.

But it was not of this that I was thinking. I was wishing I had not degenerated so much.

But I question whether he heard me. I returned to my home.

Home! As if one alone can build a nest.

How often as I have ascended the stairs that lead to my lonely, sumptuous rooms, have I paused to listen to the hilarity of the servants below. That morning I could not rest:

He will do this for an hour without blinking, for he knows that in time it will unman me.

My dog knows very little, but what little he does know he knows extraordinarily well.

One can get out of my chambers by a back way, and I sometimes steal softly—but I can’t help looking back, and there he is, and there are those haws asking sorrowfully, “Is this worthy of you?”

and so, I think, I saw her in revelation, not as the wild thing they had all conceived her, but as she really was. I saw no tameless creature, nothing wild or strange.

I saw my sweet love placid as a young cow browsing.

As I brushed aside the haze and she was truly seen for the first time, she raised her head, like one caught, and gazed at me with meek affrighted eyes.

She came to me slowly; no incomprehensible thing to me now, but transparent as a pool, and so restful to look upon that she was a bath to the eyes, like banks of moss.

Because I knew the maid, she was mine. Every maid, I say, is for him who can know her.

The others had but followed the glamour in which she walked, but I had pierced it and found the woman.

I felt only a humble craving to hear him signify that I would do. I have stood up before other keen judges and deceived them all, but I made no effort to deceive David; I wanted to, but dared not.

Those unblinking eyes were too new to the world to be hooded by any of its tricks. In them I saw my true self.

They opened for me that peddler’s pack of which I have made so much ado, and I found that it was weighted less with pretty little sad love-tokens than with ignoble thoughts and deeds and an unguided life.

All perambulators lead to the Kensington Gardens.

Not, however, that you will see David in his perambulator much longer, for soon after I first shook his faith in his mother, it came to him to be up and doing, and he up and did in the Broad Walk itself, where he would …

It is glorious fun racing down the Hump, but you can’t do it on windy days because then you are not there, but the fallen leaves do it instead of you.

There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.

From the Hump we can see the gate that is called after Miss Mabel Grey, the Fig I promised to tell you about.

Of course, it also shows that Peter is ever so old, but he is really always the same age, so that does not matter in the least.

His age is one week, and though he was born so long ago he has never had a birthday, nor is there the slightest chance of his ever having one.

The reason is that he escaped from being a human when he was seven days’ old; he escaped by the window and flew back to the Kensington Gardens.

It is a blessing that he did not know, for otherwise he would have lost faith in his power to fly, and the moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.

The reason birds can fly and we can’t is simply that they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings.

Now, except by flying, no one can reach the island in the Serpentine, for the boats of humans are forbidden to land there, and there are stakes round it, standing up in the water, on each of which a bird-sentinel sits by day and night.

He also became very learned in bird-lore, and knew an east-wind from a west-wind by its smell, and he could see the grass growing and hear the insects walking about inside the tree-trunks.

But the best thing Solomon had done was to teach him to have a glad heart.

All birds have glad hearts unless you rob their nests, and so as they were the only kind of heart Solomon knew about, it was easy to him to teach Peter how to have one.

Do you pity Peter Pan for making these mistakes? If so, I think it rather silly of you. What I mean is that, of course, one must pity him now and then, but to pity him all the time would be impertinence.

He thought he had the most splendid time in the Gardens, and to think you have it is almost quite as good as really to have it.

He played without ceasing, while you often waste time by being mad-dog or Mary-Annish. He could be neither of these things, for he had never heard of them, but do you think he is to be pitied for that?

He played without ceasing, while you often waste time by being mad-dog or Mary-Annish. He could be neither of these things, for he had never heard of them, but do you think he is to be pitied for that?

Oh, he was merry. He was as much merrier than you, for instance, as you are merrier than your father.

Sometimes he fell, like a spinning-top, from sheer merriment. Have you seen a greyhound leaping the fences of the Gardens? That is how Peter leaps them.

It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever there are children.

Long ago children were forbidden the Gardens, and at that time there was not a fairy in the place; then the children were admitted, and the fairies came trooping in that very evening.

The palace is entirely built of many-coloured glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, but the queen sometimes complains because the common people will peep in to see what she is doing.

They are very inquisitive folk, and press quite hard against the glass, and that is why their noses are mostly snubby.

The streets are miles long and very twisty, and have paths on each side made of bright worsted. The birds used to steal the worsted for their nests, but a policeman has been appointed to hold on at the other end.

One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they never do anything useful. When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.

They look tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they are doing, they could not tell you in the least.

They are frightfully ignorant, and everything they do is make-believe. They have a postman, but he never calls except at Christmas with his little box, and though they have beautiful schools, nothing is taught in them;

One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they never do anything useful.

When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies.

They look tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they are doing, they could not tell you in the least. They are frightfully ignorant, and everything they do is make-believe.

What a glorious boy he had meant to be to her. Ah, Peter, we who have made the great mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But Solomon was right; there is no second chance, not for most of us.

When we reach the window it is Lockout Time. The iron bars are up for life.

They loosened the rails before he sat on them, so that down he came on the back of his head; they tripped him up by catching his bootlace and bribed the ducks to sink his boat.

Nearly all the nasty accidents you meet with in the Gardens occur because the fairies have taken an ill-will to you, and so it behoves you to be careful what you say about them.

Maimie was one of the kind who like to fix a day for doing things, but Tony was not that kind, and when she asked him which day he was to remain behind in the Gardens after Lockout he merely replied, “Just some day;”

As they said this they looked with affected pity at an evergreen oak, for in winter they are very envious of the evergreens.

“Oh, la!” replied the oak bitingly, “how deliciously cosy it is to stand here buttoned to the neck and watch you poor naked creatures shivering!”

This made them sulky though they had really brought it on themselves, and they drew for Maimie a very gloomy picture of the perils that faced her if she insisted on going to the ball.

“How I should love to see the Cupids in their dear little fools’ caps!” Maimie cried, and away she ran to look for them very recklessly, for the Cupids hate to be laughed at.

It is always easy to discover where a fairies’ ball is being held, as ribbons are stretched between it and all the populous parts of the Gardens, on which those invited may walk to the dance without wetting their pumps.

This night the ribbons were red and looked very pretty on the snow.

The fairies had as yet scarcely missed him, for they could not dance, so heavy were their hearts. They forget all the steps when they are sad and remember them again when they are merry.

David tells me that fairies never say “We feel happy”: what they say is, “We feel dancey.”

Well, they were looking very undancey indeed, when sudden laughter broke out among the onlookers, caused by Brownie, who had just arrived and was insisting on her right to be presented to the Duke.

The fairies had as yet scarcely missed him, for they could not dance, so heavy were their hearts.

They forget all the steps when they are sad and remember them again when they are merry.

David tells me that fairies never say “We feel happy”: what they say is, “We feel dancey.”

And then Maimie went and spoiled everything. She couldn’t help it. She was crazy with delight over her little friend’s good fortune, so she took several steps forward and cried in an ecstasy, “Oh, Brownie, how splendid!”

Everybody stood still, the music ceased, the lights went out, and all in the time you may take to say “Oh dear!”

An awful sense of her peril came upon Maimie, too late she remembered that she was a lost child in a place where no human must be between the locking and the opening of the gates, she heard the murmur of an angry multitude, she …

The one thing she was sure of was that she must never cease to run, and she thought she was still running long after she had dropped in the Figs and gone to sleep.

She thought the snowflakes falling on her face were her mother kissing her good night.

She thought her coverlet of snow was a warm blanket, and tried to pull it over her head. And when she heard talking through her dreams she thought it was mother bringing father to the nursery door to look at her as she slept.

An ironmonger added a scraper and an old lady ran up with a doormat. Carpenters arrived with a water-butt, and the painters insisted on painting it.

“Finished! how can it be finished,” the plumber demanded scornfully, “before hot and cold are put in?”

and he put in hot and cold.

But it was at last finished true as true, and they had to leave it and return to the dance. They all kissed their hands to it as they went away, and the last to go was Brownie.

She stayed a moment behind the others to drop a pleasant dream down the chimney.

All through the night the exquisite little house stood there in the Figs taking care of Maimie, and she never knew.

All through the night the exquisite little house stood there in the Figs taking care of Maimie, and she never knew.

She slept until the dream was quite finished and woke feeling deliciously cosy just as morning was breaking from its egg

, and then she almost fell asleep again, and then she called out, “Tony,” for she thought she was at home in the nursery.

This was a great shock to her, but she felt she could not explain without shaming him, so with charming delicacy she gave Peter a thimble which happened to be in her pocket, and pretended that it was a kiss.

Poor little boy! he quite believed her, and to this day he wears it on his finger, though there can be scarcely anyone who needs a thimble so little.

You see, though still a tiny child, it was really years and years since he had seen his mother, and I daresay the baby who had supplanted him was now a man with whiskers.

“Never, never!” she answered with conviction, “he would have been afraid.”

“What is afraid?” asked Peter longingly. He thought it must be some splendid thing.

“I do wish you would teach me how to be afraid, Maimie,” he said.

Very reluctantly Peter began to take the thimble off his finger. He thought she wanted it back.

“I don’t mean a kiss,” she said hurriedly, “I mean a thimble.”

“It’s like this,” she said, and kissed him.

“It’s like this,” she said, and kissed him.

“I should love to give you a thimble,” Peter said gravely, so he gave her one.

He gave her quite a number of thimbles, and then a delightful idea came into his head! “Maimie,” he said, “will you marry me?”

Peter replied bitterly, “

You should see the letters Solomon gets from ladies who have six.

”

He does this at once because he thinks it is what real boys would do, and you must have noticed the little stones and that there are always two together.

He puts them in twos because it seems less lonely.

I think that quite the most touching sight in the Gardens is the two tombstones of Walter Stephen Matthews and Phoebe Phelps. They stand together at the spot where the parishes of Westminster St. Mary’s is said to meet the parish of Paddington.

For a little while we played with my two medals, and, with the delicacy of a sleeping companion, David abstained on this occasion from asking why one of them was not a Victoria Cross.

He is very troubled because I never won the Victoria Cross, for it lowers his status in the Gardens.

He never says in the Gardens that I won it, but he fights any boy of his year who says I didn’t. Their fighting consists of challenging each other.

He is very troubled because I never won the Victoria Cross, for it lowers his status in the Gardens. He never says in the Gardens that I won it, but he fights any boy of his year who says I didn’t.

Their fighting consists of challenging each other.

At twenty-five past six I turned on the hot water in the bath, and covertly swallowed a small glass of brandy. I then said, “Half-past six; time for little boys to be in bed.”

This was a delightful experience, but I think I remained wonderfully calm until I came somewhat too suddenly to his little braces, which agitated me profoundly.

I cannot proceed in public with the disrobing of David.

Soon the night nursery was in darkness, but for the glimmer from the night-light, and very still save when the door creaked as a man peered in at the little figure on the bed.

“When are you coming to bed?” he always replied, very brave but in a whisper, as if he feared the bears and wolves might have him.

When little boys are in bed there is nothing between them and bears and wolves but the night-light.

I returned to my chair to think, and at last he fell asleep with his face to the wall, but even then I stood many times at the door, listening.

“What can it be, David?”

“I don’t take up very much room,” the faraway voice said.

“Why, David,” said I, sitting up, “do you want to come into my bed?”

For this I wrote her the following insulting letter. When Mary does anything that specially annoys me I send her an insulting letter.

I once had a photograph taken of David being hanged on a tree. I sent her that.

You can’t think of all the subtle ways of grieving her I have. No woman with the spirit of a crow would stand it.

When Mary does anything that specially annoys me I send her an insulting letter. I once had a photograph taken of David being hanged on a tree. I sent her that. You can’t think of all the subtle ways of grieving her I have.

No woman with the spirit of a crow would stand it.

“Dear Madam [I wrote], It has come to my knowledge that when you walk in the Gardens with the boy David you listen avidly for encomiums of him and of your fanciful dressing of him by passersby, storing them in your heart the while you …

There were real tears in his eyes, and I was touched, and swore to him that he had done everything a dog could do, and though he knew I was lying he became happy again.

For so long as I am pleased with him, ma’am, nothing else greatly matters to Porthos.

I told this story to David, having first extracted a promise from him that he would not think the less of Porthos, and now I must demand the same promise of you.

But for this, while I should chide him I cannot do so, for of all the ways David has of making me to love him the most poignant is that he expects it of me as a matter of course.

David is all for fun, but none may plumb the depths of Porthos.

Nevertheless I am most nearly doing so when I lie down beside him on the floor and he puts an arm about my neck. On my soul, ma’am, a protecting arm.

only instead of delivering it straightway he seemed to expect David to chase him for it.

You have introduced yourself to David when you jump the railings without touching them, and William Paterson (as proved to be his name) was at once our friend.

We often found him waiting for us at the Story-seat, and the great stout fellow laughed and wept over our tales like a three-year-old. Often he said with extraordinary pride, “You are telling the story to me quite as much as to David, ar’n’t you?”

I have not the heart to follow him in all his discoveries. Sometimes he went in flame at them, but for the most part he stood looking on, bewildered and numbed, like one moaning inwardly.

He saw all, as one fresh to the world, before he had time to breathe upon the glass.

So would your child be, madam, if born with a man’s powers, and when disillusioned of all else, he would cling for a moment longer to you, the woman of whom, before he saw you, he had heard so much.

The poor fellow shot out his hand to me, but “No,” said I, “you have found me out.

Everybody finds me out except my dog, and that is why the loss of him makes such a difference to me.

Shall we go, Paterson?”

In we went, however, and though the voice had certainly come from this room we found nobody there. I looked in bewilderment at David, and he quickly put his hand over his mouth.

It was a funny room, of course, but not so funny as you might expect; there were droll things in it, but they did nothing funny, you could see that they were just waiting for Joey.

There were padded chairs with friendly looking rents down the middle of them, and a table and a horsehair sofa, and we sat down very cautiously on the sofa but nothing happened to us.

“All I ask of you,” Joey said with a break in his voice, “is to call him after me, and always to give him a sausage, sonny, of a Saturday night.”

There was a quiet dignity about Joey at the end, which showed that he might have risen to high distinction but for his fatal passion.

The last we saw of him was from the street. He was waving his tongue at us in his attractive, foolish way, and Josy was poised on Joeykin’s hand like a butterfly that had alighted on a flower.

On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away from the Gardens, and never come back.

When next you meet them they are ladies and gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail a hansom.

On attaining the age of eight, or thereabout, children fly away from the Gardens, and never come back.

When next you meet them they are ladies and gentlemen holding up their umbrellas to hail a hansom.

Where the girls go to I know not, to some private place, I suppose, to put up their hair, but the boys have gone to Pilkington’s. He is a man with a cane.

He is a man with a cane. You may not go to Pilkington’s in knickerbockers made by your mother, make she ever so artfully. They must be real knickerbockers. It is his stern rule. Hence the fearful fascination of Pilkington’s.

He may be conceived as one who, baiting his hook with real knickerbockers, fishes all day in the Gardens, which are to him but a pool swarming with small fry.

Abhorred shade! I know not what manner of man thou art in the flesh, sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a lean tortuous habit of body, that moves ever with a swish.

Thus sharply did I learn how much longer I was to have of him.

Strange that a little boy can give so much pain.

I dropped his hand and walked on in silence, and presently I did my most churlish to hurt him by ending the story abruptly in a very cruel way.

Suddenly he flashed lightning on me. “It’s not true,” he cried, “it’s a lie!” He gripped my hand. “I shan’t never forget you, father.”

Strange that a little boy can give so much pleasure.

Yet I could go on. “You will forget, David, but there was once a boy who would have remembered.”

You may be sure I begged his pardon, and made it all right with him, and had him laughing and happy again before I let him go. But nevertheless what I said was true.

David is not my boy, and he will forget. But Timothy would have remembered.

I gathered from David that this depressed her exceedingly.

Oh, Mary, your thoughts are much too pretty and holy to show themselves to anyone but yourself.

The shy things are hiding within you. If they could come into the open they would not be a book, they would be little Barbara.

Oh, Mary, your thoughts are much too pretty and holy to show themselves to anyone but yourself.

The shy things are hiding within you. If they could come into the open they would not be a book, they would be little Barbara.

But that was not the message I sent her. “She will never be able to write it,” I explained to David. “She has not the ability. Tell her I said that.”

“Dash it all!” said I irritably, and was about to resume bowling, when I noticed that he was unhappy. He hesitated, took up his position at the wicket, and then came to me manfully.

“I am a cad,” he said in distress, “for when the ball was in the air I prayed.”

He had prayed that I should miss the catch, and as I think I have already told you, it is considered unfair in the Gardens to pray for victory.

He had prayed that I should miss the catch, and as I think I have already told you, it is considered unfair in the Gardens to pray for victory.

My splendid David! He has the faults of other little boys, but he has a noble sense of fairness.

“We shall call it a no-ball, David,” I said gravely.