rew,
and the stokers would all smile, or have some joke ready, when his
bright little face appeared round some unlikely corner. For Jeff soon
knew his way about the ship, and was here, there, and everywhere all
day long. Of course he was not always thinking of his home in India,
or of the dear faces he had left behind. Even grown-up people easily
forget their sorrows in new scenes. Still, Jeff would grow grave when
he remembered he had seen the tears in his father's eyes for the first
time, when he had said, "Good-bye, my little son."

Further back still, and yet more sacred, so sacred indeed that he only
liked to think of it after his prayers, he cherished in his memory the
picture of his sad mother, standing in the verandah of their bungalow,
waving her hand to them as he and Maggie were driven away. The tight
feeling at his heart came again at the bare recollection of the tall
slim figure in white, the tearless pale face, the sad sweet smile.

When he lay in his berth at night time--above the creaking and groaning
of machinery, above the din inevitable on a steamer--he heard a gentle
voice bless him as on that last evening at home:

"God be with you, my own little lad. Be brave till I see you again. I
shall be so proud to feel that my boy is a real hero."

On the way to Bombay Jeff had asked his father what a real hero was.
Then he had been told that a hero was "one full of courage and great
patience, and dauntless before difficulties; one who allowed no fear to
overcome him, who fulfilled his duty, and something over it under hard
and trying circumstances."

Jeff was unusually quiet and thoughtful for some little time after this
explanation, and the father could not help wondering why he looked so
grave and sad.

"It will be difficult to be a hero--very difficult," he said at length
with a heavy sigh.

Then the gallant soldier, who was his father, sighed too.

It was not heroic--it was only a simple duty to send his little son so
far from him, and yet how hard a thing it was.

There was nothing that Jeff liked better on the big steamer than going
"forrard" to the men's quarters. He would sit huddled up on a
sea-chest, with his elbows resting on his knees, or would climb into an
empty hammock and remain for hours, listening to the wonderful tales
told him by the crew.

"Captain Clark, I really don't think it possibly can all be true--those
stories the men tell, I mean. They must be _quite_ heroes