“I cannot blame you,” said I. “I have felt the same myself.”
“There are—there are no troops, are there, quite so good as ours?” he asked.
“Well,” said I, “there is a point about them: they have a defect—they are not to be trusted in a retreat. I have seen them behave very ill in a retreat.”
“I believe that is our national character,” he said—God forgive him!—with an air of pride.
“I have seen your national character running away at least, and had the honour to run after it!” rose to my lips, but I was not so ill-advised as to give it utterance. Every one should be flattered, but boys and women without stint; and I put in the rest of the afternoon narrating to him tales of British heroism, for which I should not like to engage that they were all true.
“I am quite surprised,” he said at last. “People tell you the French are insincere. Now, I think your sincerity is beautiful. I think you have a noble character. I admire you very much. I am very grateful for your kindness to—to one so young,” and he offered me his hand.
“I shall see you again soon?” said I.
“O, now! Yes, very soon,” said he. “I—I wish to tell you. I would not let Flora—Miss Gilchrist, I mean—come to-day. I wished to see more of you myself. I trust you are not offended: you know, one should be careful about strangers.”
I approved his caution, and he took himself away: leaving me in a mixture of contrarious feelings, part ashamed to have played on one so gullible, part raging that I should have burned so much incense before the vanity of England; yet, in the bottom of my soul, delighted to think I had made a friend—or, at least, begun to make a friend—of Flora’s brother.