He often told Almira Jane about the fountain too; and she always said that it was a capital idea.

But it was to his father only that he told his secret.

It was a queer secret, and a very real trouble, too, I can tell you.

Part of it was that Master Sunshine was just the least bit bow-legged.

Of course there could not be much of a secret about that.  Lots of people knew it quite well.  In fact, if you looked carefully at the well-shaped limbs in the trim blue stockings and neat knicker-bockers, you could easily see that the legs curved slightly outwards.

But the real secret—­the real heart and soul of the matter—­was that being bow-legged was a great, great grief to Master Sunshine.  No one but his father ever knew this—­not even his mother, or Almira Jane, or Lucy.  It was too sore a subject to speak of freely.

It was on the day when he first put on trousers that his troubles began.  It seemed to him that people began then to make such odd remarks about him; and the strangest thing of all was that they would seem to quite forget that he heard every word they said, and that they never seemed to understand how they were hurting his feelings.

For a time he solved the difficulty in a clever way.  He begged his mother to make him some loose sailor suits with long bagging legs.

They served their purpose well, and so long as they lasted no one ever spoke of the tender subject that he wished to avoid.  But still he never felt comfortable about them in his mind.

It seemed such a cowardly thing to hide his legs like that, and he did so want to be manly in all his ways.

So, after a long talk one day with his father, as they sauntered hand in hand down a shady country road, with Gyp sporting and playing alongside, he decided to face the trouble bravely, and wear knickerbockers like other boys of his age.  And, instead of sulking or fretting about what he could not help, he set himself to making allowances for other people.

“Father says that every one has his trials,” he would say to himself sagely; “and I dare say that most folks have worse trials than mine.  So when Almira Jane is ‘nervous,’ and Lucy is fretful, or mother has her bad headaches, I must just remember to be ’specially good to them.  Maybe, after all, bow-leggedness isn’t the worst thing to put up with.”

CHAPTER II.

The wanderer and his wife.

Master Sunshine was such a busy boy.  Sometimes it seemed to him that the reason he did not get into as much mischief as other boys of his age was because he really had no time in which to be idle.

There was school each day, to begin with, and lessons to be prepared, and story-books to read, and the flower-garden to be cared for, and Gyp to teach new tricks to, and the pets to be tended and looked after,—­in fact, there were more things than I can tell you of always waiting to be done.