It had belonged to a town boy, we could see; there was a shortness about the legs and arms of the suit; and a bagging at the knees, peculiar to the rising youth of London streets.

A small day-school he had been at, evidently.

If it had been a regular boys' school they wouldn't have let him play on the floor so much, and rub his knees so white.

He had an indulgent mother too, and plenty of halfpence, as the numerous smears of some sticky substance about the pockets, and just below the chin, which even the salesman's skill could not succeed in disguising, sufficiently betokened.

They were decent people, but not overburdened with riches, or he would not have so far outgrown the suit when he passed into those corduroys with the round jacket; in which he went to a boys' school, however, and learnt to write--and in ink of pretty tolerable blackness, too, if the place where he used to wipe his pen might be taken as evidence.
A black suit and the jacket changed into a diminutive coat.