“We want to be soldiers. Do you not remember you talked to us before about being soldiers? Let us be soldiers for a bit, and make lovely plans, and you be our captain,” said Kitty again.
“Well, of course you can be soldiers; that is easy enough.”
“But you must settle a sort of victory time for us—a great big reward time—and let it come three months from now, after we come back from the summer holidays, or perhaps before. Plan it all out, Uncle Peter; plan everything out as straight as possible. Make us soldiers, and give us a battle to fight.”
“Dear me!” said Uncle Peter, “this is quite a Sunday afternoon talk. Do you mean it in the religious sense?”
“Oh yes, if you like; but what we want is to have something to fight hard about.—Don’t you think so, Nan?”
Nan’s face had turned very white; her eyes, shining with intense earnestness, fixed themselves on Captain Richmond’s face.
“A sort of moral battle,” said the Captain. “Well, of course it can be done. I will plan it all out and tell you what we will do to-morrow; I cannot think of it in an instant. Those who wish to join must be regularly enrolled as soldiers.”
“Soldiers under Captain Richmond,” laughed Nora—“or Captain Peter, as we always call you. You will have to set us things to do, and you will have to write to us from Aldershot, and you must make a whole lot of punishments if we go wrong. Oh! it will be exciting—quite splendid.”
Just then Miss Roy came into the room.
“How cosy you all look!” she said “What is up?”