"Returning home, the scholar ventured to ask for a pair of boots. The request struck Samud's mother as so extraordinary that she made him repeat his inquiry twice. It was all the more strange as it was the first time the scholar had troubled about his dress. When he was ten they had the greatest difficulty in the world to get him to give up a long pinafore of figured cotton, which he considered far more comfortable than all the breeches and all the doublets on earth; then, from the age of ten to the age of fifteen, he had worn with indifference any garments his mother had thought good to put him in, always preferring dirty and old ones to clean and new, because in them he was allowed to go out in all weathers and to roll about in all kinds of places. So the demand for a pair of boots seemed to his poor mother altogether most unprecedented, and she was alarmed for her son's reason. 'A pair of boots!' she repeated. 'What will you wear them with?' 'A pair of tight-fitting breeches, mother.' 'A pair of tight-fitting breeches! But you must know your legs are as spindle-shaped as a cock's.' "'Excuse me, mother,' the schoolboy replied, with some show of logic; 'if I have good enough calves to wear short breeches, they are good enough to wear tight-fitting breeches.' "The mother admired her son's wit, and, half conquered by the repartee, she said,'We might perhaps manage to find the tight-fitting trousers in the clothes-press; but the boots ... where will you find the boots?' 'Why, at Landereau's!' 'But boots would be expensive, my child,' said the poor lady, sighing,'and you know we are not rich.' 'Bah! mamma, Landereau will allow you credit.' 'It is all very fine taking credit, my boy; you know one has to pay some day, and that the longer one puts off paying the more it costs.' 'Oh, mother, please do let me!' 'How much will the boots cost?' 'Four dollars, mother.' 'That is six months' school-money at the rate good Canon Gregorio charges me.' 'You can pay for it in four months' time, mother,' the schoolboy pleaded. 'Still ... tell me what advantage you think this pair of boots and the tight-fitting trousers will bring you?' 'I shall be able to please Doña Lorenza, the canon's niece.' 'How is that?' 'She raves over boots and tight-fitting trousers ... it seems they are the very latest thing in Madrid.' 'But what does it matter to you what the niece of Don Gregorio raves or does not rave over, I want to know?' 'It matters a great deal to me, mother.' 'Why?' "The schoolboy looked supremely foolish. 'Because I am paying her attentions,' he said." This dialogue was word for word what had passed between my mother and myself after I returned from Landereau's shop, so I grew hot with anger.