As if in testimony of his mother's opinion the babe set up a lusty wail, sometimes crescendo, sometimes staccato, then babbling recitando, flourishing his fists and kicking his limbs in animal spirit.
"Oratory enough to oppose a Pitt," said the Captain, with a grimace, and putting his fingers in his ears. "He will be a parliamentarian some day, no doubt. See, he is already beginning to gesture." Then, changing his bantering tone, "He has the nose, the forehead, the blue eyes, the hair of his grandfather, Squire Andrew Trembath, my father, and why not the name."
The wife saw the desire of her husband and acquiesced in the name. "He shall be called Andrew," she said.
The Captain, though much pleased with the comforts of home and the presence of his wife and child, still retained the passion for war and battlefields. He came of a long line of Cornish soldiers and the war spirit had become intensified in himself. Was there any truth in the old legend of the blood of the Danish freebooters mingled in his ancestors? He knew not and gave it not a thought. War called him, and he joined the Iron Duke in the Peninsular campaign. When the War of 1812 with America began, fired with the same old passion to redeem his family name from the stain of treason, he secured his discharge, with the rank of major, and was soon on his way to participate in that struggle. Here he disappeared after the defeat of Proctor, and his wife and son, Ande, were succoured from dire distress and want, into which this event plunged them, by the death of the widow Borlase. Her fortune of a thousand pounds, depleted somewhat, was by regular process of law conferred upon Mrs. Thomas Trembath. Such was the condition of affairs at the time our tale opened.
"Ande, laddie, hast been fighting?"
"Well, I had a bit of a fight with Bob Sloan—a great hulking bully 'e is—but the master parted us. He called father and grandfather names and said I was a coward, and I beant a coward."
"Laddie, why are you always picking up the insults of the lads, and how often have I told you about language. 'Beant' isn't good English."
Now before the parson and other dignitaries Ande was accustomed to use good language, but before the boys and at times before his mother, he drifted into a little of the vernacular.
"Well, I forget sometimes, mother dear, but my torn clothes are due to another affair and not the fight."
The lad recited the incidents of the runaway, while engaged in eating the lunch that had been so long delayed. The mother listened with bright eyes, attending occasionally to the wants of the table, and when the tale was fully narrated, she leaned over the back of his chair, kissed his forehead, and called him her "brave laddie."