“Certainly, certainly,” replied Lord Blair, still somewhat puzzled.
“Thanks, that’s all,” said Daniel. “Good-night.”
“Will you come to luncheon tomorrow?” Lord Blair asked, as they shook hands. “I will then show you the draft of my reply to the Minister of War.”
“Thank you,” Daniel answered, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “I’ll be delighted, if it isn’t a party. I haven’t got any respectable clothes with me.”
“Tut, tut!” murmured his Lordship. “Come in anything you like.” And with that he patted his friend on the arm, and hastened with little tripping steps back to the house.
Daniel put his hands in his pockets and faced the sentry, who was once more standing at ease. “John Macdonald,” he said, “is the account square?”
The Scotchman looked at him with a twinkle in his eye. “Ye mus’ na’ speak tae th’ sentry on duty,” he answered.
Daniel uttered a chuckle, and walked off across the square.
[CHAPTER III—THE WORLD AND THE FLESH]
When a man, in the heyday of his manhood, voluntarily lives the life of a monk or hermit, his friends suppose him to be either religious, defective, or possessed of a secret mistress. Now, nobody supposed Daniel Lane to be religious, for he seldom put his foot inside a church: and people seem to be agreed that religion is, as it were, black kid gloves, handed out with the hymnbooks and, like them, “not to be taken away.” Nor did anybody think him abnormal, for a figure more sane, more healthy, or more robust in its unqualified manhood, could not easily be conjured before the imagination.