“Oh, come now, I say,” returned the unabashed Alister. “Don’t be raspy! I suppose I can look at you as well as anybody else, can’t I? I like looking at you!”
The Major gave a short laugh.
“Oh, you do, do you!” he returned. “Much obliged to you, I’m sure!”
He coughed again, laughed, chuckled—and then settled his features into gravity.
“Now, look here, you scamp,” he said, resting his big hand on Alister’s small shoulder: “How did it happen?”
“Well, we were playing soldiers,” explained Alister, “and I was the Britisher, and he was the Britisher’s enemy. He was half starved, and he had to get behind an entrenchment. The entrenchment was the hall, and he was in a terrible way, because you see he had no water, no food, and he was run down with fever and ague. You see, I was the well-fed Britisher, and I had everybody looking after me, and all the world watching what I was going to do,—and I had prayers put up for me in all the churches, and he was only a savage and a brother. But he said, ‘I have got a way to surprise you,’ said he, and he turned a somersault, and he said, ‘Yah!’ as savages do, you know,—and he ran behind his entrenchment (the hall door), and just without thinking took up the gun and fired it through the window. I was lying low, waiting attack, and I was nearly killed—not quite—and then he was frightened, and ran out, and he said, ‘We’ll be brothers,’ and we hid in ambush, and then you called——”
“Yes, that’s all very well!” said the Major, suppressing his strong desire to grin at this account of warfare; “But why did he tell a lie?”
“Oh, I suppose because he was the enemy!” replied Alister calmly. “You see, in the camp he had nobody watching him, and no churches to pray for him,—he was only a savage! I expect that’s what it was!”
The Major looked reflective.
“Well, now you had better go away home,” he said. “There’ll be no more fighting or games between Christian brotherhoods to-day. Boy will have to be punished.”