"Oh, for that perhaps! I was thinking of birth. You are Pamela Romilly, and your family is distinguished; he is but a common child."
Pamela was veritably startled by such an odd remark. The "common child" appeared to have much the same feeling, to judge by his round eyes. He looked at Pam--to whom he was devoted--anything she said was right, but he did not understand much about it anyway.
"That sounds rather like the Middle Ages--or the people of the French Court before the big Revolution, doesn't it?" she said cautiously, not wishing to offend this young person of strange views who had helped her so grandly out of a tight corner; "you see we don't have that sort of opinions nowadays. At least one never hears them--especially since the war. It brought us all close together. Our brother fought--and Mrs. Ensor's brother fought, and there you are. We've all got on the same ground and we want to stay like that--you can't put people back when they've done ripping things, can you?"
Reube closed his eyes. These were the sentiments he was used to from Romillys, Shards, Ensors, and Badgers, and all the rest of the valley folk; he could understand that.
"Did your brother fight?" asked the strange girl quickly.
"Oh, yes--Royal Navy--he's Lieutenant on the destroyer Spite. Dad's a sailor, you know, he commands the battleship Medusa, one of the new ones."
There was a pause, then the other girl rose to her feet.
"My father was killed," she said in a sort of fierce, stifled voice.
Pamela jumped up also. She was shocked through all her sensitive being.
"Oh," she exclaimed. "Oh, I'm so horribly sorry. I oughtn't to have talked about the war, one never knows. How splendid--how utterly splendid!"