“I don’t!” cried Arthur loudly. “No, no—active service for me, and plenty of it!
“‘Come one, come all, this rock shall fly
From its firm base as soon as I!’
“That’s my motto, and my ambition is the Victoria Cross, and I’ll get that too before I’m done; you see if I don’t! It’s the ambition of my life, Peg. I lie awake and think of that little iron cross; I go to sleep and dream of it, and see the two words dancing before my eyes in letters of fire, ‘For Valour,’ ‘For Valour,’ ‘For Valour.’ Ah!”—he drew a deep breath of excitement—“I don’t think there is anything in the world I should envy, if I could only gain that.”
Peggy gazed at him with kindling eyes. “You are a soldier’s son,” she said, “and the grandson of a soldier, and the great-grandson of a soldier; it’s in your blood; you can’t help it—it’s in my blood too, Arthur! I give you my solemn word of honour that if the French or Germans came over to invade this land, I’d—” Peggy seized the ruler and waved it in the air with a gesture of fiercest determination—“I’d fight them! There! I’d shoot at them; I’d go out and spike the guns; I’d—I’d climb on the house-tops and throw stones at them. You needn’t laugh, I tell you I should be terrible! I feel as if I could face a whole regiment myself. The spirit—the spirit of my ancestors is in my breast, Arthur Reginald, and woe betide that enemy who tries to wrest from me my native land!” Peggy went off into a shriek of laughter, in which Arthur joined, until the sound of the merry peals reached Mrs Asplin’s ears as she lay wearily on her pillow, and brought a smile to her pale face. “Bless the dears! How happy they are!” she murmured to herself; nor even suspected that it was a wholesale massacre of foreign nations which had been the cause of this gleeful outburst.
Arthur left the vicarage on Tuesday evening, seemingly much refreshed by the few days’ change, though he still complained of his head, and pressed his hand over his eyes from time to time as though in pain. The parting from Peggy was more cheerful than might have been expected, for in a few more weeks Christmas would be at hand, when, as he himself expressed it, he hoped to return with blushing honours thick upon him. Peggy mentally expended her whole ten pounds in a present for the dear handsome fellow, and held her head high in the consciousness of owning a brother who was destined to be Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in the years to come.
The same evening Robert returned from his visit to London. He had heard of Peggy’s escapade from his father and sister, and was by no means so grateful as that young lady had expected.
“What in all the world possessed you to play such a mad trick?” he queried bluntly. “It makes me ill to think of it. Rushing off to London on a wet, foggy night, never even waiting to inquire if there was a return train, or to count if you had enough money to see you through! Goodness only knows what might have happened! You are careless enough in an ordinary way, but I must say I gave you credit for more sense than that.”
“Well, but, Rob,” pleaded Peggy, aggrieved, “I don’t think you need scold! I did it for you, and I thought you would be pleased.”
“Did you indeed? Well, you are mightily mistaken; I wouldn’t have let you do a thing like that for all the microscopes in the world. I don’t care a rap for the wretched old microscope.”
“Oh! oh!”