"Yes, sir, by my mother's side."
"And yet you have taken the Queen's shilling! Strange! But it is no business of mine. Young scapegrace, I suppose—"
"My character is as good as—" "yours," McKay would have said, but his reverence for the general's rank restrained him. "I enlisted because I could not enter the British army and be a soldier in any other way."
"With your friends'—your relatives'—approval?"
"With my mother's, certainly; and of those nearest me."
"Do you know General Wilders—here in the Crimea, I mean?"
"My regiment is in his brigade."
"Yes, yes! I am aware of that. But have you made yourself known to him, I mean?"
The young sergeant-major knew that his gallantry at the Alma had won him his general's approval, but he was too modest to refer to that episode.
"I have never claimed the relationship, sir," he answered, simply, but with proud reticence; "it would not have beseemed my position."