“Indeed! you think so?” she said, pressing her lips to his wet, cold brow. “You say this because you look forward with horror to the bloodshed to come.”
“Yes; it is dreadful. I was so helpless to-night, and I shall be losing men through my ignorance.”
“Helpless to-night? But you beat the enemy off.”
“No, no—Ben Martlet’s doing from beginning to end.”
“Perhaps. The work of an old trained man of war, who has ridden to the fight a score of times with your father, and now your brave father’s son’s right-hand—a man who worships you, and who told me only to-day, with the tears in his eyes, how proud he was of that gallant boy—of you.”
“Ben said that—of me?”
“Yes, my boy; and do you think with all his experience he cannot read you through and through?”
“No, mother, he can’t—he can’t,” said the lad, despondently; “no one can know me as I do.”
“Poor child!” she said, fondly, as she caressed him; “what a piece of vanity is this! A boy of seventeen thinking he knows himself by heart. Out upon you, Roy, for a conceited coxcomb! Why, we all know you better than you know yourself; and surely I ought to be the best judge of what you are.”
“No,” said Roy, angrily; “you only spoil me.”