“No indeed, quite the reverse—nobody will be hard upon you, my boy,” said I. “Huntingshire is quite ready to bestow anything you wish upon you, Bertie—anything from a seat in Parliament, up to the prettiest daughter it has, if you mean to set up your household gods in the Estcourt jointure-house.”
Bertie blushed once more, and coughed, and cleared his throat a little, as if he had some intentions of taking me into his confidence, when my boy Derwie suddenly made a violent diversion by rushing in all red and excited, and flinging himself against our soldier with all his might.
“Bertie!” shouted little Derwent, “is it true you’re going to have the Victoria Cross?”
Bertie colored violently as he recovered from that shock. I don’t believe, if he had been suddenly charged with running away, that he would have looked half as much abashed.
“Why, you know, Derwie, we’d all like it if we could get it,” he said, faltering slightly; but I knew in a moment, by the sudden movement of his head and glance of his eye, that he really did believe it possible, and that this was the darling ambition of Bertie’s heart.
“But Bevan told me!” cried Derwie—“he told me about those gates, you know, that you and the rest blew up. Mamma, listen! There were six of them, forlorn-hope men, Bevan says”——
“Ah, Derwie, hush!—four of them sleep yonder, the brave fellows!—four privates, who could not hope for distinction like me,” cried Bertie, with that same profound awe and compunction, contrasting his own deliverance with the calamity of others, which had once stricken me.
“A private can have the Victoria Cross as well as a general,” cried Derwie, clapping his hands; “and more likely, Bevan says—for a general commands and doesn’t fight.”
“That is true—God save the Queen!” cried Bertie. “If Corporal Inglis gets it, Derwie—and he ought—we’ll illuminate.”
“If you get it,” said Derwie, “you deserve it all the same. Mamma, they blew up the gates with gunpowder; they went close—so close that”——