"And we are soldiers too," said Dr. Campbell, weightily, "and our orders are to be instant in season and out of season."
A little murmur of approval ran through the company. There was a militant look on every face, a militant ring in every voice, as they discussed what ought to be done. The women workers, with Erda at their head, went solid for defiance,--only Mrs. Campbell making the reservation "if James approved." So did some of the men, notably David Campbell, who passed from one group to another, his pale blue eyes a-glisten with enthusiasm.
Erda's followed him with such approval, that Lance crossed over pugnaciously to where she stood, with a pretty flush on her cheeks, listening.
"It is a pity you haven't got Jean Ziska's drum, Miss Shepherd," he said. "By Jove! how you would bang it! Then, right or wrong, there would be a high old row, and that would just suit me!"
"There can scarcely, Sir Lancelot,"--she paused on the title with a strain after contempt which did not somehow come off,--"be a question as to right or wrong in this case."
He gave a kindly, almost indulgent laugh. "There never can be, really, of course. One is bound to be right, the other wrong. The mischief is to know t'other from which! Now I expect the sixty thousand nobles, and the grand-master who were left dead on the field, and the two thousand poor devils who got drowned in the river besides, and all the others--you know about 'em, of course, and you must admit he was a bloodthirsty chap at any rate!--had got a musical instrument of some sort, too. You can't fight without a band, Miss Shepherd, specially drums and fifes. But Jean Ziska was blind; so he could only hear his own music."
"And I hear it, too," she said superbly, with all the more defiance, because his words touched her innate sense of justice, as they did so often.
As she spoke, the not unusual sound--considering that one side of the mission house gave on the city--of a native tom-tom drifted in through the open window, causing Lancelot's eyes to brim over with smiles.
"That isn't it, anyhow, is it, Miss Shepherd?" he said. "I saw that drum-banger as I came past just now--the funniest old dried stick of a Brahmin you ever set eyes on. And you know those 'round the mulberry bush,' fairy-ring, endless circles of men and women hand in hand we used to cut out of newspaper when we were kids? Well, he was using gilt paper, and trying to make a miracle out of the 'biz'! One god, he said, in many; the outline being the same, and the eye of faith sufficient to fill in the details of divinity! The people were buying them by dozens for the half of nothing. I asked 'em why, and they said as toys for their children. So I expect it will be the endless circle of boys and girls again--don't you? For, you know," he went on in the confidential voice which, dimly, she recognized was for her alone, "I've never been able to find out the least difference in kids. I talk to the little beggars when I'm out shooting, you know, and--well! the boys are just as much boys as I used to be--"
Used to be! Yet once again, for the hundredth time at least since they had first met, barely a month ago, his youth, his boyish, whole-hearted, healthy zest in life made her eyes soft; made her feel, with all the true womanhood in her that, if she ever had a son, she prayed he might be like this. And something else she recognized--not for the first time, either; namely, that boyish, almost thoughtless as he was, puzzling himself not at all with the problems of life, you could never dip below the surface without finding him, as it were, there before you; finding him clear-eyed, ready to treat the shady side of things as he treated the light side; that is, with an absolutely limpid honesty.