"Put on your coat and cap."

The boy who had been looking and listening with open mouth and a heart
that hardly dared to beat, became wildly excited.

"Now, Keith," the father admonished, "you can't go unless you behave."

"Where's my coat, mother," asked Keith eagerly and unheedingly.

"Don't you know that yourself," growled the father. "You are a big boy
already, and you should keep your own things in order."

"I have hung it up where he cannot reach it," the mother interceded.
"I'll get it for him."

The coat and the cap were on at last, but then began the struggle about
the muffler and the mittens. The mother had crocheted them herself for
Keith and insisted that they should be worn whenever he went outdoors
during autumn and winter. The muffler was long and white, with blue
rings two inches apart, and in shape more like a boa.

Keith wanted the mittens, because his hands got cold easily, but not the
muffler, which, he thought, made him look like a girl.

The father objected to everything of that kind, which he said, tended to
make the boy soft and susceptible to colds. He himself did not put on an
overcoat until the weather grew very severe, and he never buttoned it,
no matter how cold it grew. His throat was always bare, and he never
wore gloves of any kind. Nor did he ever put his hands in his pockets
while walking. He had a favourite trick of picking up a handful of snow,