"A man can face the cannon's mouth better than a friend's ridicule," said General Newton; "the young soldier we were hearing about before dinner had a nobler courage than this poor fellow here."
Roy said no more, but though he listened and looked, the rest of the time they were in the gallery, his thoughts were with the hero of the Victoria Cross. He ran back to have one more look at him before they went downstairs, and gazed up at the bold, frank bearing, and the laughing mouth of the soldier, with wistful pity in his brown eyes.
"You served your Queen and country, but I expect you left out God," he said, in a whisper; then he ran on to overtake the others.
After an early tea the boys were packed up in the trap to come home.
"Drive home as quickly as you can," said the general to the groom, "for rain is not far off, and it will not do to let Master Fitz Roy get a soaking; he looks as if a breath of wind will blow him away."
"I do hate people talking about me like that," Roy confided to Dudley as they set off at a brisk rate; "I might just as well be a girl. I often wonder I wasn't born one for all the good that I shall do in the world."
"That's all stuff," said Dudley, indignantly; "you'll be an awfully strong man I expect when you grow up, you see if you aren't!"
Roy shook his head, and was unusually silent for some time. They were driving through the outskirts of a village when down came the rain. The groom wrapped the boys up as well as he could, and was urging the horse on, when it suddenly shied and came to a standstill. Looking down, the groom saw a small child seated in the middle of the road, almost miraculously preserved from the horse's hoofs.
"Well, here's a go," he muttered; "where on earth does it come from, we don't want no delay in such a storm as this!"
The boys had sprung down at once from the trap, and were endeavoring to drag the child away when it burst into roars of fright and anger.