He threw the door wide open and, with one foot advanced and his weight on the other hip, stood at pose with uplifted arm and sword; as gallant a figure as ever melted a maiden’s heart or stormed a foeman’s citadel. There was great suggestion of power in the straight limbs, a marvellous promise of strength in the upward sweep of the arm, which, for a moment, held the inmates of the room in silence of admiration. Then an avalanche of exclamations broke loose.
“Richard, Richard!”
“Master Clevering!”
“A health to the young Continental!”
“Oh, the new uniform, how bravely it doth become him!”
“The buff and blue forever!”
“What an air the coat gives him.”
“And the breeches have never a wrinkle in them. I have ever said, my son, that you were not over fair of feature, but that the Lord made it up to you in the shape o’ your legs.” The last speaker was his mother, who, passing behind him, ran her fingers caressingly along the seams of his military outfit.
The young man lowered his sword and answered with a boyish laugh: “And truly did the Lord owe me a debt in that He gave me not your beauty, mother.”
“He balanced His account,” was the complacent answer, “for you are a fit figure to please even a king.”