ded to have one more try at her.
Then, if she didn't give him satisfaction, he would know that
Four Years Old was all a humbug. As he looked longingly into her
face, his words faltered, as though he were again expecting
disappointment.

"Will he--will he wear his big, shiny hat when he does it?"

Into Mother's face came a puzzled, half knowing look. She
recalled the admiration inspired in a certain little boy by a
certain abominable top hat that a certain doctor had once worn to
a certain annual meeting of the State Medical Society. But this
was the extent of her knowledge.

"When he does what?" she asked.

The little boy's lip trembled, and he turned away his face. He
saw it wasn't any use. Mother didn't understand; she evidently
hadn't tried. It was plain that he was not four years old; he was
only three. It is very hard on little boys to be only that old
when they have made up their minds to be four. So, when David was
being dressed, he suffered all the while with a severe case of
what is commonly called pouts, but which in reality is something
much sadder.

"My, my!" said Mother, as she drew a stocking over the pink toes
of his right foot, "one mustn't look like that on his birthday."

"It is not my birthday," he said, not impertinently, but politely
and woefully.

Even a pair of new shoes did not prove that this was his
birthday, and yet they helped to prove it. One gets them at such
times as Christmas and birthdays, and such a delightful squeak
was in these shoes that David could scarcely eat his breakfast
for wanting to walk about in them. If a circus should come to
town, he would now be ready for it; he had the shoes. And
besides, there were tassels on them--wonderful tassels. It is
much easier to be a brave soldier-man if they have tassels.

Do you know what it is to be a brave soldier-man? Well, to be
that, one must be kind and sweet and unselfish and do right. And
doing right is doing mostly what you don't want to do. To wash a
lot--that is right; to keep your fingers out of the pie--that is
right; to keep your hands from spilling mucilage on the cat's
back--that is right. If you make dents with a tack-hammer in
Mother's piano, that is not right; that is a surprise.

The only safe way of doing right is to think of what you would
rather do, and then do something else. But often this is such
hard work that sometimes one doesn't care much about being a
brave soldier-man.

For all that, it's jolly