"No, but you might be the first to do it with a clog round his feet in the shape of a person like me. How many years did your cousin say—twenty or thirty, wasn't it?"
"R-rot, little Alix!" He brought out the interjection with a contemptuous roll. "It might be twenty or thirty years for a numskull like Duffers, but for me! There are ways by which a man who's in the business already, as you might say, goes skimming over the ground the common herd have to tramp. Look at the gentlemen-rankers in your own army. They enlist as privates, and in two or three years they're in the officers' mess with a commission. That comes of their education and—"
"That's often true, I admit. I've known of several cases in my own experience. But even two or three years—"
"Wouldn't you wait for me?"
He asked the question with a sharpness that gave me something like a stab.
"Yes, of course, Hugh, if I promised you. And yet to bind you by such a promise doesn't seem to me fair."
"I'll take care of that," he declared, manfully. "As a matter of fact, when father sees how determined I am, he'll only be too happy to do the handsome thing and come down with the brass."
"You think he's bluffing then?" I threw some conviction into my tone as I added, "I don't."
"He's not bluffing to his own knowledge; but he is—"
"To yours. But isn't it his knowledge that we've got to go by? We must expect the worst, even if we hope for the best."