“I’ll try, sir. It won’t be very hard, that last.”
“Say! Stop that! And that ‘sir’ business. Who taught you that?”
“That’s the way we address the Scoutmaster; and—and my father was a soldier of the Civil War.”
Mr. Smith softened. “And made a record to be proud of; I’ve heard it from your mother. But here’s the situation, Billy: You’re beginning at the bottom; but if you are to be useful to me you must have a definite power of your own; you must compel. It’s in you; and while you must adopt a stolid exterior in this first job, when you come in contact with my men, when you are delivering my orders, you must charge them with enough powder of your own to make them carry. See?”
Billy thrilled with the prescience of future force. “I think I see what you mean, Mr. Smith. I shall try not to disappoint you; though—” A sudden thought of Erminie intruded itself,—what would this man of great affairs say if he knew that a wife, and the support of a home, would soon be the burden that he, a mere boy, would have to add to the difficult service Mr. Smith was asking.
“Out with it! Better thrash out all the ‘ifs,’ and ‘thoughs’ right now. But I don’t allow those words a place in my vocabulary.”
“Then I won’t!” Billy brought out the words with a snap.
“Well said, my boy! That’s the soldier’s way. But remember this: While I get my business done, done at any cost,—if one man can’t do it another must; yet I know when a thing proves impossible. I don’t expect the impossible.”
He gave Billy a reassuring clasp of the hand, and a look that determined the boy to “make good if any chap going could,” and bade him good-night.
Billy did not know how long he had been away from the drawing-room till he went in and found the others going, and Bess already hatted.