“Yes,” said Lyle; “and he can also tell the story of the forlorn hope you led when you won that wooden toe. No, Fitzroy, honour and glory won’t do, now that the war is over. It was all very well when you and I were boys.”
“Well, there is medicine, the law, and the church, and business, and farming, and what-not.”
“Now, my dear friend, which of those on your list do you think your boy would adopt?”
“Well,” replied Fitzroy, with a smile, “I fear it would be the ‘what-not.’”
“And mine, too. Our lads have too much spirit for anything very tame. There is the blood of the old fighting Fitzroys in your boy’s veins, and the blood of the restless, busy Lyles in Leonard’s. If you hadn’t lost nearly all your estates, and if I were rich, it would be different, wouldn’t it, my friend?”
“Yes, Lyle, yes.”
Fitzroy jumped up immediately afterwards, and stumped round the room several times, a way he had when thinking.
Then he stopped in front of his friend.
“Bother it all, Lyle,” he said; “I think I have it.”
“Well,” quoth Lyle, “let us hear it.”