“He was mean to my father, and he is mean to my mother.” His voice conveyed a sudden bitterness.
“Oh!”
“Mamma says I must like him; but I do not. I just can't. You would not like a man who was mean to your mother, would you!”
“I would not,” declared the General, truthfully.
“And I am not going to like him,” asserted the boy, with firmness.
The General suddenly pitied one grandfather.
They had come to a well-lighted corner, and as the boy lifted his face, the light fell on it. Something about the bright, sturdy countenance with its frank, dark eyes and brown hair suddenly sent the General back thirty years to a strip of meadow on which two children were playing: one a dark-eyed boy as sturdy as this one. It was like an arrow in his heart. “With a gasp he came back to the present. His thoughts pursued him even here.
“What is your name?” he asked as he was feeling in his pocket for a coin.
“Oliver Drayton Hampden, sir.”
The words were perfectly clear.