you think we could make a soldier of him?" broke in the Paymaster,
carrying his rattan like a sword and throwing back his shoulders.

"A soldier!" she said, casting a shrewd glance at the boy in a red
confusion. "We might make a decenter man of him. Weary be on the
soldiering! I'm looking about the country-side and I see but a horde of
lameter privatemen and half-pay officers maimed in limb or mind sitting
about the dram bottle, hoved up with their vain-glory, blustering and
blowing, instead of being honest, eident lairds and farmers. I never saw
good in a soldier yet, except when he was away fighting and his name
was in the _Courier_ as dead or wounded. Soldiers, indeed! sitting
round there in the Sergeant More's tavern, drinking, and roaring, and
gossiping like women--that I should miscall my sex! No, no, if I had a
son----

"Well, well, Mary," said the Paymaster, breaking in again upon this
tirade, "here's one to you. If you'll make the man of him I'll try to
make him the soldier."

She understood in a flash! "And is he coming here?" she asked in an
accent the most pleased and motherly. A flush came over her cheeks and
her eyes grew and danced. It was as if some rare new thought had come
to her, a sentiment of poetry, the sound of a forgotten strain of once
familiar song.

"I'm sure I am very glad," she said simply. She took the boy by the
hand, she led him into the kitchen, she cried "Peggy, Peggy," and when
her servant appeared she said, "Here's our new young gentleman, Peggy,"
and stroked his hair again, and Peggy smiled widely and looked about for
something to give him, and put a bowl of milk to his lips.

"Tuts!" cried Miss Mary, "it's not a calf we have; we will not spoil his
dinner. But you may skim it and give him a cup of cream."

The Paymaster, left in the parlour among the prints of war and warriors,
stood a moment with his head bent and his fingers among the snuff
listening to the talk of the kitchen that came along the spence and
through the open doors.

"She's a queer body, Mary," said he to himself, "but she's taking to the
brat I think--oh yes, she's taking to him." And then he hurried down
the stair and up round the church corner to the schoolhouse where the
company, wearied waiting on his presence, were already partaking of his
viands. It was a company to whom the goodwife of Ladyfield, the quiet
douce widow, had been more or less a stranger, and its solemnity on this
occasion of her burial