"Aye, Jacobus, you speak truly. We were just as much concentrated upon self as the youth of to-day. And in our elderly hearts we're proud of the little frivolities and dissipations that were committed then. Else we would never talk of 'em and chuckle over 'em to one another."
"And what is more, we're not too old yet for a little taste of pleasure, now and then, eh, Alexander?"
The schoolmaster, appealed to so directly, pursed his thin lips, lowered his lids to hide the faint twinkle in his eyes, and replied in measured tones:
"I cannot speak for you, Jacobus. I've known you a long time and your example is corrupting, but I trust that I shall prove firm against temptation."
The oysters were finished. No man left a single one untouched on his plate, and then a thick chicken soup was served by two very black women in gay cotton prints with red bandanna handkerchiefs tied like turbans around their heads. Robert could see no diminution in the appetite of the guests, nor did he feel any decrease in his own. Mr. Hervey turned to him.
"I hear you saw the Marquis de Montcalm himself," he said.
"Yes, sir," replied Robert. "I saw him several times, at Ticonderoga, and before that in the Oswego campaign. I've been twice a prisoner of the French."
"How does he look?"
"Of middle age, sir, short, dark and very polite in speech."
"And evidently a good soldier. He has proved that and to our misfortune. Yet, I cannot but think that we will produce his master. Now, I wonder who it is going to be. Under the English system the best general does not always come forward first, and perhaps we've not yet so much as heard the name of the man who is going to beat Montcalm. That he will be beaten I've no doubt. We'll conquer Canada and settle North American affairs for all time. Perhaps it will be the last great war."