"You always bring that; but you are doubly welcome for bringing this young soldier back to me," said she, putting her arm affectionately around her son.
Just then the boys came rushing in from taking the horses to the stable. They made a dive toward the fire to warm their little chapped hands.
"I told you Hugh warn't as tall as the General," said Frank, across the hearth to Willy.
"Who said he was?"
"You!"
"I didn't."
"You did."
They were a contradictory pair of youngsters, and their voices, pitched in a youthful treble, were apt in discussion to strike a somewhat higher key; but it did not follow that they were in an ill-humor merely because they contradicted each other.
"What did you say, if you didn't say that?" insisted Frank.
"I said he looked as if he thought himself as tall as the General," declared Willy, defiantly, oblivious in his excitement of the eldest brother's presence. There was a general laugh at Hugh's confusion; but Hugh had carried an order across a field under a hot fire, and had brought a regiment up in the nick of time, riding by its colonel's side in a charge which had changed the issue of the fight, and had a sabre wound in the arm to show for it. He could therefore afford to pass over such an accusation with a little tweak of Willy's ear.