Boy answered bravely enough, but his spirit sank as he thought that if he never disobeyed, his obedience, instead of a virtue, would oblige him to do the most foolish and unnecessary things under his mother’s orders,—and if he never told a lie, his hours of freedom and play would be considerably if not altogether curtailed, and he would be made the poor little peg on which his parents would hang their many quarrels and discussions. The Major noticed the touch of hesitation in his answer as well as in his manner, and did not like it. But he repressed his own forebodings, and smiled cheerily down upon the small forlorn lad in whom lay the budding promise of a man who might, or might not, be fit for good fighting in the combat of life.
“When you are bigger and stronger I’ll show you how to handle a gun,” he said,—“At present you are too small a chap. You would blow yourself into bits as easily as you blew out the hall window. Now come along with me and I’ll show you the birds we got to-day.”
He strode out into the grounds, and Boy followed him with an odd mixture of feeling. Sorrow and shame, united to wonder and scorn, put him into a mental condition not easy to explain. To his childish mind it seemed difficult to understand why Major Desmond and Miss Letty should be such straight, honest, sober folk, and his own father and mother such shiftless, indifferent, careless people.
“They don’t seem to see that a boy can’t do just as well with a father who doesn’t care about him, as he could with a father who does!” he mused. “I suppose I’m bound to be a lonely boy!”
And he trotted on in silence beside the Major, and looked at the beautiful shot grouse and blackcock, and was very attentive and docile and respectful, and the Major felt a twinge of pain in his good heart as he realized that Boy had plenty of material in him for the making of worthy manhood, material which was being thrown away for want of proper management and training. He confided his feelings on this subject to Miss Leslie that night, in the company of a brother officer, some years younger than himself, who had few joys left in life save the love of sport and a good game of chess or billiards. Captain Fitzgerald Crosby—or “Fitz” as he was generally called—was a fine, upright personage, with a most alarmingly grim and rigid cast of countenance which rather repelled timid people on first introduction. He was “a cross-looking old boor” with all the ladies until he smiled. Then such a radiance played in his quiet grey eyes, and such a kindness softened the lines of his mouth and smoothed away the furrows of his brows, that he was voted a “darling” instantly. On this occasion, when Major Desmond started off expatiating on the waste of Boy’s life, and Miss Letty paused in her knitting, listening to his remarks with sorrowful attention, Fitz looked particularly glum handling his billiard cue thoughtfully, and staring at its point as though it were a magic wand to conjure with.
“There’s a good deal of waste everywhere, it seems to me,” he said slowly. “The scientific fellows tell us that nothing is wasted in the way of matter,—every grain of dust and every drop of dew has got its own special business, and is of special use; but upon my word, when you come to think of the finer things—love and hope and goodness and charity and all the rest of it, it seems nothing but waste all along. There’s a great waste of love especially!”
The Major coughed, and hit a ball viciously.
“Yes, there’s a great waste of love,” went on the unheeding and still gloomily frowning Fitz. “We set our hearts on a thing, and it’s immediately taken from us,—we work all our days for a promising son or a favourite daughter, and they frequently turn out more ungrateful than the very dogs we feed—and as Byron says, ‘Alas, our young affections run to waste and water but the desert!’ Byron was the only poet who ever lived, in my opinion!”
Major Desmond gave a short laugh.
“Upon my word, Fitz, you’re a regular old croaker this evening, aren’t you? You’re making our hostess quite miserable!”