'Don't you, Aunt Angel? I do, every word; about being useful and making the world a bit better. I knew then I'd got to do it, and it was only to settle how; and when I heard about Kiah and the captain, I thought it seemed the nicest way, and I knew it would please you. And it does, doesn't it? That's the best part of going, knowing you're glad for me to go.'
Angelica's hand met Betty's in the dusk and held it tight, and for once it was she who answered for them both:
'Yes, Godfrey dear, very glad and very proud.'
'I told the captain so yesterday,' Godfrey went on; 'and he said I'd better make up my mind directly to be a hero, for I came of an heroic family. That was what he said, and I sha'n't forget. There's the captain and Cousin Crayshaw.'
'Yes, go and meet them,' Angel said, for Betty's hand was trembling in her own and she could hear the catch in her breath that meant she was strangling her tears. She slipped her hand out of Godfrey's arm and let him go forward, while she and Betty drew back through the gap in the yew hedge to Miss Jane's arbour, just where Betty had flung herself down in despair on that first day of Godfrey's coming to Oakfield. They were almost the same words that she gasped out now on Angel's shoulder, as they sat down on the bench side by side; for Betty, though she was nineteen now and wore her hair in a knot at the top of her head, and considered herself a rather elderly person, was much the same vehement little lady as the Betty we knew at thirteen.
'I can't do it,' she sobbed, 'I can't, it's no use; I'm not the right person to be—to be a hero's aunt. I don't want him to go, I shall die if he gets killed; I sha'n't be proud, I shall only be miserable; what am I to do?'
Angel's arms tightened their clasp, she bent her head low over Betty's fair hair and tried to speak once or twice in vain. Then she said at last:
'Dear, we must just say what we said the first day he came. We want to love him, not our own pleasure in him; we haven't loved him and prayed about him and tried to teach him just for ourselves.'
'Oh, I don't know,' faltered Betty; 'I'm afraid I'm selfish, I'm not brave like you. I thought I should feel like the Spartan mothers, but I don't. I can't think of the country. I can only think of Godfrey.'
'Oh, Betty dear, I'm not brave—I never was. I don't feel a bit like a Spartan mother; but it seems to me we needn't mind about what we feel like. We've only got to try and look brave and help poor Cousin Crayshaw, for he is dreadfully sad, and make it easy for Godfrey to go, and not let him think we're fretting.'