"The General said 'e'd telegraph this morning. I expect 'e's a bit tired after that dinner. My word! it must have been a fine sight—all those old chaps, and the officers, all with their medals and their orders on. Somethin' like a Tamash that was. They've seen a deal, they 'ave."
Johnny rose from table with the paper still in his hand. "I think," he said, "that grandfather would wish all the servants to hear what's in this paper, and I'd like to read it to them. Please tell them to come here at once, Ridgeway."
The long line of servants filed into the room just as they did when the General was at home to read prayers. And Johnny, fair-haired, round-faced, and ever so serious, stood up before them all to read aloud about the dinner that the proprietors of a great newspaper had given to the survivors of the Indian Mutiny of 1857.
Everybody was impressed; and the cook, who was fat and full of sensibility, wept audibly.
Johnny's voice did not falter except when he stumbled over one or two of the long words in some of the speeches, till he came to what Ridgeway called "the hymn" written by Mr. Rudyard Kipling.
"One service more we dare to ask:
Pray for us, heroes, pray,
That when Fate lays on us our task,
We do not shame the day."
As he reached this last verse his voice broke.
"That's all," he said hastily, "and thank you very much for listening." Then he fled to the stables, bearing the precious newspaper with him that he might read it all over again to the General's groom and the stable boys.
Johnny was the youngest of a long line of soldiers and civilians who had served our Indian Empire. Father and mother were still in India, though they were coming home before the hot weather and mother would probably not go out again. Johnny, himself, always talked of "going back" when he should be through Sandhurst; although he had left India for good at four years old. Yet he heard "the East a-calling" with the same loud imperative call that all his race had so ungrudgingly obeyed.
Johnny adored the works of Mr. Rudyard Kipling. His nursery days had been enriched and enchanted by the Jungle Books and Just So Stories; and as he grew older he chose out for enthusiastic admiration certain heroes from among the short stories, heroes who were to him a never-failing inspiration and example. He was sure, of course, that Mr. Kipling was "a real person," but he was infinitely more confident that Bobby Wicks and John Chinn and Georgie Cottar had actually existed, did actually exist, except poor Bobby Wicks who died of cholera. They were, in fact, far more manifest to the mind of Johnny than the man privileged to chronicle their doings. It was beastly bad luck that Bobby Wicks had died: it always made him want to kick his best friend for at least an hour afterwards when he read that story. All the same, Bobby had not died in vain, for his cheery, unconscious heroism had kindled in the breast of at least one small boy a steady flame of patriotism and the passionate hope that when his time should come he, too, might serve and suffer with the men he hoped one day to lead.