"I wish we had several millions. He is a fine, energetic type. A bit of a hero-worshipper—a bit of a philosopher, a bit of a stoic: 'He hath seen men rise to authority without envy, and schooled himself to endure adversity, that he might bear himself the better when his time should come to rule.'"
"His time is coming, or I am no judge of capability. And you quoted from the Encheiridion of Epictetus, I think? I've always found good reading-meat in that and the Discourses. Used to carry a little sixpenny copy about in my pocket, until I wore it to rags."
"I have often seen and noted its raggedness, and its uncompromising Isabella-hue!"
"It was negroid in complexion before the Relief of Gueldersdorp. Perhaps you won't be astonished when I tell you I have got it now." The Chief's smiling eyes narrowed in laughter. "My wife has bound it gorgeously, and with other volumes of my Siege library, it occupies a special and most sacred shelf near my writing-desk at home."
He went on:
"This fine fellow Sherbrand is an old correspondent of mine. He would say I might tell you the story, and I think it's worth hearing, in a way. It must be eight years ago, when he would be about seventeen, that he wrote to me from an engineering college at Newcastle, to say he had read some papers of mine on the subject of scouting, and proposed—if I thought it would not be presumption on his part—save the mark!—to enrol and organise a troop on the lines laid down. He wanted a definite code of Scout law to work on, and Rules and so forth, all of which I supplied him, you may be sure. Busy as I was drilling and cub-licking the North British Territorials, I couldn't find time to spare to run up and see the boy. So he commandeered a holiday and motor-cycled to Headquarters. Rode all through one night in pelters of rain, and caught me in my 5 A.M. tub."
"He meant business."
"Business—and it was up to me to encourage such grittiness and enthusiasm. So I ordered coffee for two, and bacon and eggs for half a dozen, and when I had fed him I talked. My book wasn't published, but I lent him some proof-sheets. He thanked me, but before he took them he had to disburden his mind."
The fine sunburnt hand went thoughtfully to the grizzled moustache, worn rather longer than of old.
"He had got something on his mind. He had been reading that old bogey-book, Hales on Mental Heredity, and the theory of the transmission of base or criminal tendencies from the parents to the children, had haunted him night and day. He said to me, standing up before me, looking about as long and thin as a fathom of pump-water: 'My father was dismissed from the Army in War-time, for not backing up his C.O. Is there a kink in my brain or a bacillus lying waiting in my body that will one day make a slacker of me?"