Hugh still kept his old place without offering comment, so Strangwayes, after a moment or two, rose and lit a candle at the hearth. He did not pause even to slip off his accoutrements, but, holding the light, began roaming about the chamber on inspection, and communicating the results of his researches to his companion: “We might be worse placed. Two flights of stairs upward from the ground, so the air should be delicate and wholesome. Also the room is so small the fireplace ought to heat it well. And for the lack of furnishings, the emptiness near cheats a man into believing he has space enough to stretch himself. A contented spirit, mark you, is an admirable necessity in a soldier.”
In the end he brought up at the nearer of the two windows, which he opened, and, after a long look out into the night, drew in his head again with a soberer face. “If I risked myself a hand-breadth further from the casement, I think I could make out the roofs of St. John’s,” he said, sitting down quietly, with the one small table betwixt himself and Hugh. “’Tis the good old college of which I was so unworthy a son. I am glad we lie near it.”
“Where is the rest of the regiment?” Hugh asked.
“Sir William and most of his officers lodge just over the way at a merchant’s house; Turner and Chadwell and Seymour are here under the roof with us. We’ll all meet together at Sir William’s table.”
Hugh started back on his stool so he nearly overset himself. “Dick,” he burst out, “that means that thrice a day I shall be forced face to face with Colonel Gwyeth.”
Strangwayes nodded, and then, the sheer absurdity of the whole position coming over them, they both went into a fit of laughter.
Hugh recovered himself with a saner feeling of self-possession. “After all, it’s very simple,” he said aloud; “he’ll take no note of me, I know, and I’ll bear me as I would to Captain Turner, or any of the older men.”
But, in spite of his stout words, when he woke in the dark of next morning Hugh could not sleep again for thinking of Colonel Gwyeth, and wondering if he would see him at breakfast and if the colonel would speak to him.
When he first entered the long upper chamber of the house across the way that served the officers for dining hall, he looked about him, half eager and half in dread, and despising himself for both emotions. But he saw no sign of Alan Gwyeth, Colonel Gwyeth, as he named him to himself, for all he was now a mere captain. Two of the officers of the old independent troop, a German, Von Holzberg, and a certain Foster, who had come over into the regiment with the colonel, Frank pointed out to him; but Hugh only glanced at the men and went on eating. He wondered if it had been either of them that shoved him off the steps that night at Shrewsbury, and he had no desire to come in contact with them.
After breakfast Frank Pleydall haled him off to view the city. “You might spare me one hour away from your Dick Strangwayes,” the younger lad complained. “But I knew after you got sight of him you’d not have a word for me.”