On his last day of the holidays before he returned for his second term at his preparatory school, Huggo was noisy with excitement at the idea of returning. It rather pained Rosalie that he showed not the smallest sign of regret at leaving home. Miss Prescott had done all the necessary business of getting his clothes ready for school, but Rosalie took from Field’s this last afternoon to do some shopping with her little man (as she termed it) in Oxford Street; to buy him some little personal things he wanted,--a purse of pigskin that fastened with a button, a knife with a thing for taking stones out of horses’ hoofs, and a special kind of football boots. Since there had come to her the “men that marry for a home” significance, that mirage in her face had much presented that mutinous and determined boy it often showed. Only the mother was there when she set out with Huggo. And then the sense of pain. Oxford Street appeared to be swarming with small boys and their mothers similarly engaged. All the small boys wore blue overcoats with velvet collar and looked to Rosalie most lovably comic in bowler hats that seemed enormously too big for their small heads. Huggo was dressed to the same pattern but his hat exactly suited his face which was thin and, by contrast with these others, old for his years. Rosalie wished somehow that Huggo’s hat didn’t suit so well; the imminent extinguisher look of theirs made them look such darling babies. And what really brought out the difference was that all these other small boys invariably had a hand stretched up to hold their mothers’ arms and walked with faces turned up, chattering. Huggo didn’t. She asked him to. He said, “Mother, why?” “I’d love you to, darling.” He put up his hand and she pressed it with her arm to her side, but she noticed that he was looking away into a shop window while he did as he was asked, and there came in less than a dozen paces a congestion on the pavement that caused him to slip behind her, removing his hand. He did not replace it. In the shop where the knife was to be bought an immense tray of every variety of pocketknife was put before them. Huggo opened and shut blades with a curiously impatient air as though afraid of being interfered with before he had made his choice. Immediately beside Rosalie was another mother engaged with another son upon another tray. “It’s got to have a thing for levering stones out of horses’ hoofs,” said Huggo, brushing aside a knife offered by the assistant and rummaging a little roughly. Rosalie said, “Darling, I can’t think what you can want such a thing for.” The lady beside her caught her eye and laughed. “That’s just what I’m asking my small man,” she said. Her small man, whose face was merry and whose hat appeared to be supported by his ears, looked up at Rosalie with an engaging smile and said in a very frank voice, “It’s jolly useful for lugging up tight things or to hook up toffee that’s stuck.”