"I don't know what you mean. What else are we? I believe you admire him."
"I do," confessed Cosmo sturdily.
This did not prevent him from joining the army in Spain before the year was out, and that without asking for Sir Charles's approval. Sir Charles condemned severely the policy of using the forces of the Crown in the Peninsula. He did not like the ministry of the day and he had a strong prejudice against all the Wellesleys to whose aggrandizement this whole policy seemed effected. But when at the end of a year and a half, after the final victory of Toulouse, his son appeared in Yorkshire, the two made up for the past coolness by shaking hands warmly for nearly a whole minute. Cosmo really had done very little campaigning and soon declared to his father the wish to leave the army. There would be no more fighting for years and years, he argued, and though he did not dislike fighting in a good cause, he had no taste for mere soldiering. He wanted to see something of the world which had been closed to us for so long. Sir Charles, ageing and dignified, leaned on his stick on the long terrace.
"All the world was never closed to us," he said.
"I wasn't thinking of the East, sir," explained Cosmo. "I heard some people talk about its mystery, but I think Europe is mysterious enough just now, and even more interesting."
Sir Charles nodded his bare gray head in the chill evening breeze.
"France, Germany," he murmured.
Cosmo thought that he would prefer to see something of Italy first. He would go north afterwards.
"Through Vienna, I suppose," suggested Sir Charles with an impassive face.
"I don't think so, sir," said Cosmo frankly. "I don't care much for the work which is going on there and perhaps still less for the men who are putting their hands to it."