The old salt swore a great oath, and said:
“You are pups of the old breed, and you run true to type. I'm glad to know you, gentlemen,” he continued, shaking them warmly by the hand.
After they had gone a few steps he called Barry back to him.
“That's my card, sir. I should like you to come to see me in London sometime when you are on leave.”
Barry glanced at the card and read, “Commander Howard Vincent, R. N. R.”
“It was very decent of the old boy,” he said to the Commanding Officer afterwards, when recounting the interview. “I don't suppose I'll ever use the card, but I do think he really meant it.”
“Meant it,” exclaimed the Commanding Officer. “Why, Dunbar, I'm an old country man, and I know. Make no mistake. These people, and especially these naval people, do not throw their cards loosely about. You will undoubtedly hear from him.”
“It's not likely,” replied Barry, “but the old gentleman is great stuff, all right.”
During the long, sunny spring day, their dinky little train whisked them briskly through the sweet and restful beauty of the English southern counties. To these men, however, from the wide sunbaked, windswept plains of western Canada, the English landscape suggested a dainty picture, done in soft greys and greens, with here and there a vivid splash of colour, where the rich red soil broke through the green. But its tiny fields set off with hedges, and lines of trees, its little, clean-swept villages, with their picturesque church spires, its parks with deer that actually stood still to look at you, its splendid manor houses, and, at rare intervals, its turreted castles, gave these men, fresh from the raw, unmeasured and unmade west, a sense of unreality. To them it seemed a toy landscape for children to play with, but, as they passed through the big towns and cities with their tall, clustering chimneys, their crowding populations, with unmistakable evidences of great wealth, their shipping, where the harbours bit into the red coast line, there began to waken in them the thought that this tiny England, so beautifully finished, and so neatly adorned, was something mightier than they had ever known.
In these tiny fields, in these clean swept villages, in these manor houses, in these castles, in factory and in shipyard, were struck deep the roots of an England whose greatness they had never yet guessed.