"I know it, my boy," he said, pityingly. "I have been expecting this. You are weary of the country."
I stood up, with my hands in my pockets, and my back against the latticed wall of the house, gazing over the sparkling, dancing sea, to where, on the horizon, the stars seemed to stoop and meet it. Was I tired of this quiet home? I scarcely knew; country sports and country sights were dear to me, and I had no desire to leave them for ever. I thought of the fat trout in the Exford streams, and the huntsman's rallying call from "t'other side Dunkerry," and the wild birds that needed so much getting at and such quick firing, and of the deep-sea fishing, and the shooting up the coombes from Farmer Pulsford's boat, and of the delight of shipping on a hot summer's day and diving deep down into the cool bracing water. Why should I wish to leave all this? What should I be likely to find pleasanter in the world of which, as yet, I knew nothing? For a moment or two I hesitated—but it was only for a moment or two. The restlessness which had been growing up within me for years was built upon a solid foundation, and would not be silenced.
"No, I'm not tired of the country, father," I answered, slowly. "I love it too much ever to be tired of it. But men don't generally live all their lives in one place, do they, without having any work or anything to do except enjoy themselves?"
"And what should you like to be?" my father asked, quickly.
I had long ago made up my mind upon that point, and was not slow to answer—
"I should like to be a soldier," I declared, emphatically.
I was very little prepared for the result of my words. A spasm of what seemed to be the most acute pain passed across my father's face, and he covered it for a moment with his hands. When he withdrew them he looked like a ghost, deathly pale in the golden moonlight, and when he spoke his voice trembled with emotion.
"God forbid that you should wish it seriously!" he said, "for it is the one thing which you can never be!"
"Oh, Hugh, you do not mean it really; you do not wish to go away from us!"
I turned round, for the voice, a soft and gentle one, was my mother's. She was standing in the open window with a fleecy white shawl around her head, and her eyes, the sweetest I ever saw, fixed appealingly upon me. I glanced from one to the other blankly, for my disappointment was great. Then, like a flash, a sudden conviction laid hold of me. There was some great and mysterious reason why we had lived so long apart from the world.