“Oh, I don’t know; but what a night! It was glorious! And to think that all the while I was moping alone over a stupid book, while you were enjoying yourself like that.”
“Enjoying myself!” cried Frank scornfully.
“Yes, enjoying yourself. There, with your sword out, defending your beautiful mother from the Guards, after saving your father’s life, and keeping the castle—house, I mean—against the men who were battering down the gate—door.”
“Well,” said Frank drily, “if I have no more romance in me than there is in a big drum, you have.”
“I should think I have!” cried the lad, whose handsome, effeminate face was scarlet with his excitement. “Why, you cold-blooded, stony-hearted old countryman, can’t you see that you were doing man’s work, and having glorious adventures?”
“No; only that it was very horrible,” said Frank, with his brow all in lines.
“Bah! I don’t believe you felt like that. What a chance! What a time to have! All the luck coming to you, and I’m obliged to lead the life of a palace lapdog, when I want to be a soldier fighting for my king.”
“Wait till you get older,” said Frank. “I wanted to be a man last night.”
“Why, you were a man. It was splendid!” cried Andrew enthusiastically.
“I wasn’t a man, and it wasn’t splendid,” said Frank sadly. “I felt all right then; but when I woke this morning, I seemed to see myself standing there in our drawing-room, with my sword in one hand and the big silver candlestick in the other, and I felt that I must have looked very ridiculous, and that the young officer and the men with him must have laughed at me.”