Boy went to her, and meekly accepted the thick hank of ugly grey wool she offered him, and stretching it out, as was his custom when he had to do this kind of duty, on the back of a chair, he set to work patiently winding it off into a ball. Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir meanwhile wrote two letters, and sealed them in their respective envelopes. Then she took them out into the hall, and Boy heard her call the servant to take all the letters to the post.
“Is mine gone too?” he asked, as she re-entered.
“Of course! Do you think your mother could be so careless as to forget it?”
Boy said nothing, but went on winding the grey worsted till he had made a neat, soft, big round of it,—then he handed it to his mother and ventured to kiss her cheek.
“My own Boy!” she said gushingly. “You do love me, don’t you?”
“Yes, mother. Only—only——-”
“Only what?”
“I wish you were sending me to a school in England. I don’t like going to France!”
“That’s because you don’t know what is for your good, dear!” said Mrs. D’Arcy-Muir, with a magnificent air. “Trust to mother! Mother always does everything for the best!”
Boy made no answer, but presently went away to his room and took down a book in large print, which Major Desmond had given him as a parting gift, entitled “Our Country’s Heroes,”—in which there were some very thrilling pictures of young men, almost boys, fighting, escaping from prison, struggling with wild beasts, climbing Alpine heights, swimming tempestuous seas, and generally distinguishing themselves,—and as he turned the pages, he wondered wistfully whether he would ever be like any one of them. He feared not; there was no encouragement held out to him to be a “country’s hero.”