"But Dr. MacKay says that Dr. Sinclair and Sergeant Gorman have not been in any real danger since they went over there. He says that the Chinese respect them too much to molest them."
"Yes; but that is where the difference comes in. Sinclair is a man. So is Gorman. So is MacKay. The Chinese know it, and they are safe. But some of the others—not all, only some—are not men. They wouldn't be safe."
"I wish that I were a man."
"If you were, I venture to say that you would be a soldier."
"I had a brother once. He was a soldier."
"I did not know that you ever had a brother. You never told me that."
By this time they had left the company on the forward deck and, walking away aft, were leaning on the rail. She was in a more subdued and meditative mood than McLeod had ever seen her before.
"No," she said, "I never told you. I rarely tell anybody. I do not know why I am telling you now."
McLeod listened in sympathetic silence. He knew that behind this fact of the brother of whom she seldom spoke there must be a tragedy. If she wished to tell him, he would listen. But if she did not, he would respect her reserve and not seek to pry into its privacy.
"My brother was an officer in a crack English cavalry regiment. He fought in Egypt and was mentioned in despatches after Tel-el-Kebir. But he was the only Scottish officer in the regiment, and the only son of a tradesman. The rest were Englishmen and sons of do-nothing aristocracy. They never ceased twitting Allister about being a Highland kern, and that his father was a shopkeeper, and had started life as an errand boy. The fact that he was mentioned in dispatches made them worse. They were jealous."