"Not much!" Magnus answered, sitting straight up again, and gazing off at the shining river. "About as little as you'd like to have me. But mother, you don't know how hard it is."
"Perhaps I do," she said. "The world power does not go by places, nor is the devil shut up to any State. Didn't you tell me that you had always at least a storm flag out?"
"Did you guess what I meant?"
"Cherry guessed," said Mrs. Kindred. "She said you never took your flag down, even on the stormiest days."
"Like Cherry!" cried Magnus. "Her true heart could not even imagine anything else. Well, mother, that's what it ought to mean—and what it does mean, for that blessed old banner down yonder. The toughest wind that blows never finds that flagstaff empty, from reveille to retreat. And in the deadest sort of a calm you can see a touch of blue and a gleam of red clinging and glowing about the top of the old pole."
"And for you, Magnus? What does it mean for you?" the mother said anxiously.
"Oh, nothing very bad!" Magnus answered. "Only sometimes I seem to fly my storm flag in fair weather."
There was a long, quiet pause. Magnus waited for his mother to speak, and her words were not ready. The young cadet, looking at her again, found no shocked expression, as he had feared; the tender face was grave and thoughtful, but calm; the eyes gazing out far beyond him.
"Dear," she said at last, "are all the men in your Company Christians?"
"All the men in my Company? Well, I should say not."