"Why, sir," I replied, "he did give bad names to all things in England; and then he fell foul of the women—and—and I do not like him."
"De Rondiniacque," said Captain Royston, "is a good comrade and a brave soldier; and, faith, I did think all women were fair to him. He will fall in love and again fall out thrice in a day. But no woman is long fair in his eyes when his fortune has been ill. There was a lass in Flanders—" and here he broke into a laugh, and I into a yawn of subterfuge, in hope to put him off his tale. For I feared, unjustly enough, more talk of that kind that I had comprehended but sufficiently to dislike. Whereat he asked if he wearied me, and I answered that he did not so, but that I would know if he were of a like complexion with M. de Rondiniacque in matters of women and love.
"Nay, indeed, lad," he answered, laughing again; "De Rondiniacque and I are little akin in such matters. I have, as he would say, the slower temper—perhaps the more constant."
"Constant!" said I; and as I said the word I could feel the little tremor in my laughter which I hoped his ear would not detect. "Constant to what—to whom? Ah, there is doubtless some lady that looks out over the endless canals and ugly windmills of flat Holland for your return, Captain Royston."
"Nay, nay," he answered, "there is no broad Dutch face wet with tears of my causing." And then the mirth died out of his voice, as with a very tender hesitancy he continued: "But there is, or there was, a little maid—a child—but, plague on me! what do I babble of? And what does so young a lad as you know of these things?"
"H'm-m-m!" said I, as one that could, if he would but speak, lay claim to knowledge enough and to spare.
"What, what!" he cried, mocking me. "Is your heart even as tender as your years? Does the baby think he knows what love is?"
"On my conscience, yes," I answered; "but I may know and never feel it, I do suppose."
"What an outlandish boy it is!" said Ned, laughing; and, more gravely, "when you love, lad, and would have your lady look upon you, be as when you served us so well this day, and not the child that is disordered by the chance word of a jolly soldier. I have heard tell that women do love one that is a man, be his vows, even as De Rondiniacque's, never so brittle."
"Perhaps they do," I answered; and wondered, sickly a little in my heart, how it would fare with me if his were so. "But," I continued, "if men's vows are so light, what of that little maid?"