The Colonel submitted, as the old do, and his submission was very much accelerated by Fortescue saying promptly:
“Now, Colonel, I am the commanding officer at Rosehill, and you will not be permitted to return to Holly Lodge, except under guard or on your parole.”
When the house was quiet, and Uncle Cesar had put the Colonel to bed, as in the days long past, the old soldier lay quiet and wakeful in his high-post bed, watching through the chinks of the shutters the dawning of the bright Christmas day. His heart was at peace.
“It is but for a little while,” he said to himself.
But the Colonel was to see one more Christmas, a year later. On that day, Betty’s boy, the most beautiful baby ever seen, was to be christened “Beverley Fortescue” for the old Colonel. There was to be no Christmas ball at Rosehill, for the Colonel was past going downstairs, and sat in his great chair awaiting from the Great Commander the order to march. The baby was to be christened in the Colonel’s room, and out of the old bowl which served both for eggnogs and for christenings. Fortescue and the Colonel and Uncle Cesar and Aunt Tulip and Kettle thought they never saw so lovely a picture as Betty, with a pale, glorified face, and wearing a long, clinging white gown such as are seen in the pictures of angels, holding her baby in her arms to receive baptism. The baby, beautiful and dark-eyed, looked seriously at the new world about him, and acted with the dignity worthy of his name.
When the ceremony was over, and the old clergyman, who had also baptized Betty when she was a baby, was gone, Betty, holding her boy in her lap, sat by the Colonel. Fortescue, looking proudly at the baby, said, “My son shall be a soldier,” and the baby nodded, as much as to say:
“I know what you mean.”
Kettle, in convulsions of delight, watched him, while Aunt Tulip, in a nurse’s cap and a huge white apron, revelled in her new dignity as the baby’s mammy.
“Boy,” said the Colonel to Uncle Cesar, “give me my sword.”
Uncle Cesar took the sword down from over the mantelpiece, and the Colonel putting the hilt in the baby’s hand, said to him: