"I dare say you do. For your sake I wish so, too, dear."
"And I wish you wouldn't keep on calling me dear!" Donald exclaimed complainingly; "you have such an old-fashioned way of speaking, May, as though you were your own grandmother!"
May laughed, but she was secretly hurt. She moved to the window and watched her guardian pacing the garden paths. In a minute she cried—
"I hear a band! I believe the soldiers are coming! Let us go to the gate and watch them pass!"
There were several hundred recruits billeted in Midbury, and nearly every day they went for a long march. This morning, as they came to the big iron gate leading into the shrubbery which hid the Glen and its gardens from the high road, they found an elderly gentleman there with a pretty, fair-haired, blue-eyed little girl, and a boy leaning on a crutch. They saluted them as they passed by.
"I seem to know the faces of some of them," remarked Mr. Basset, as the last line of khaki-clad figures disappeared from view.
"A lot of them are Midbury men," Donald answered. "How well they are marching!—much better than they did a week ago! Did you notice young Dicker, May?"
May nodded. Her face was flushed, and her eyes sparkling. She could not think why it was that the sounds of a military band and marching feet should always bring a lump into her throat.
"What Dicker is that?" inquired Mr. Basset. "Not the blacksmith's son? Yes? Why, he is an only child! I wonder his father let him join!"
"His father wouldn't have been very pleased if he hadn't," Donald answered quickly; "I managed to get as far as the blacksmith's yesterday, and had a talk with old Dicker. He was so proud to tell me that his boy had been the first man in Midbury to obey the call to arms. He says that after our duty to God comes our duty to our king and country. He's right, isn't he?"