He was an overgrown
boy, of that age when boys are seldom interesting except to one
another; that age of physical, mental and moral conflict, when the
anxious mother can scarcely trust the testimony of her confidence in
the future greatness of her growing son; when the calculating father
becomes agitated in his eagerness to know if his bashful heir will
favor religious, professional, or commercial tendencies, and when the
grown-up sister tries to anticipate in a grown-up sisterly way what
sort of a drawing room item her now unsophisticated relative will
prove to be. This last is the most trying speculation of all. How big
a boy's feet invariably look in a fashionable sister's eyes! how long
his arms, and how shapeless his hands! Poor blushing youth, is not the
ordeal worst for himself, at that period when he scarcely dares trust
the most modest of monosyllabic discourses to be articulated by those
lips that are warning a waiting public of the dawn of whiskerdom!
Freddy, once so lithe and graceful and pretty, had been transformed
into an ungainly being, all length, without breadth or thickness. He
had not even the advantage of the average immatured youth, he had
neither muscle nor physical bulk. He was still a delicate boy with a
nervous cough and a fretted look. He was more than ever peevish and
self-willed, with this only difference. In his earlier years his
selfishness was at least manifested in a dependent sort of way; his
thousand wants were made known in impatient requests.
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