One of those "kids" is now a lieutenant in the regiment of which Dick is a captain, and, indeed, in a fair way to become a colonel—for the second time in his life.
NETTIE.
BY ALFRED G. SAYERS.
Nettie was a bright, fair girl of fifteen years of age, tall and graceful in movement and form, and resolute in character beyond her years. She was standing on the departure platform of the L. & N. W. Railway at Euston Square, watching the egress of the Manchester express, or rather that part of it which disclosed a head, an arm, and a cap, all moving in frantic and eccentric evolutions.
Tom, her brother, two years her senior, was on his way back to school for his last term, full of vague, if big, ideas of what he was going to be when, school days over, he should "put away childish things." "Most of our fellows," he had said loftily, as he stood beside his sister on the platform a few moments before, "go into the Army or Navy and become admirals or generals or something of that sort." And then he had hinted with less definiteness that his own career would probably combine the advantages of all the professions though he only followed one. But Tom soon dropped from these sublime heights to more mundane considerations, and his last words concerned a new cricket bat which Nettie was to "screw out of the gov'nor" for him, a new pup which she was to bring up by hand under his special directions, and correspondence, which on her part at least, was to be regular, and not too much occupied with details about "the kids."
Nettie sighed as she turned her steps homewards, and her handkerchief was damped by at least one drop of distilled emotion that bedewed the rose upon her cheek. Poor Nettie, she too was conscious of a destiny, and had bewildered thoughts of what she was going to be! She had opened her heart on this subject to her brother Tom during the holidays; but she had not received much encouragement, and at the present moment she was inclined to murmur at the reflection that the world was made for boys, and after all she was only a girl.
"What will you be?" Tom had said in answer to her question during one of their confidential chats. "You? why, you—well, you will stay with the mater, of course."
"Yes; but girls do all sorts of things nowadays, Tom," she had replied. "Some are doctors, some are authors, some are——"
"Blue-stockings," responded the ungallant Tom. "Don't be absurd, Net," he added patronisingly; "you'll stay with the pater and mater, and some day you will marry some fellow, or you can keep house for me, and then, when I am not with my ship or my regiment, of course I shall be with you."