"How is your mother?"
"Well; thanks. She'll be glad to see you again."
Cary looked seaward.
"I shall never forget," she said, "how she nursed me." She was silent a moment. "How's Rob?" she asked, presently.
"I'm inclined to think he's less changed than any one of the three of us. He's fiery, fierce, affectionate, as ever, with a wonderful talent for getting into scrapes and scrambling out of them again."
"What is he—a sailor?"
"He wanted to go in the navy—bad. Poor Rob. But my uncle had set his heart on the army for him. You know he was a great fighter in his day—retired on a wound that would have killed most men. He wanted him to go to Sandhurst, but Rob kicked on that, and they compromised on Woolwich."
"I didn't know Rob would ever have brains enough for the Engineers." Cary laughed and caught wildly at her hat, which the wind was trying to tear from her head.
"Rob's clever enough—cleverer than most men, if he'd only study. He leaves Woolwich in a couple of months now—graduated. How he has ever stayed there as long as he has is a marvel. Such doings!" Stewart shook his head even as he smiled.
"I believe," he said, after a pause, "It's for his father's sake and my mother's that he has drawn the line where he has! There isn't an officer or an instructor who don't like him, though. He's as straight as a string where honor is concerned, and as brave—Well! You know how brave he could be as a child."