When he speaks it is with a carefully shortened vocabulary. As an author
shuns monotony, so does the boy shun change. He does not generally talk
slang; his habitual words are the most usual of daily words made useful
and appropriate by certain varieties of voice. These express for him all
that he will consent to communicate. He reserves more by speaking dull
words with zeal than by using zealous words that might betray him. But
his brevity is the chief thing; he has almost made an art of it.

He is not "merry." Merry boys have pretty manners, and it must be owned
that this boy's manners are not pretty. But if not merry, he is happy;
there never was a more untroubled soul. If he has an almost grotesque
reticence, he has no secrets. Nothing that he thinks is very much
hidden. Even if he did not push his father, it would be evident that the
boy loves him; even if he never laid his hand (and this little thing he
does rarely) on his friend's shoulder, it would be plain that he loves
his friend. 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.