been looking forward to it," said the Vicar.

"I don't think there's anything to tell," replied James.

His father and mother were looking at him with happy eyes, and the
Colonel nodded to Mary.

"Please, Jamie, tell us," she said. "We only saw the shortest account in
the papers, and you said nothing about it in your letters."

"D'you think it's very good form of me to tell you about it?" asked
James, smiling gravely.

"We're all friends here," said the Vicar.

And Colonel Clibborn added, making sheep's eyes at his wife:

"You can't refuse a lady!"

"I'm an old woman," sighed Mrs. Clibborn, with a doleful glance. "I
can't expect him to do it for me."

The only clever thing Mrs. Clibborn had done in her life was to
acknowledge to old age at thirty, and then she did not mean it. It had
been one of her methods in flirtation, covering all excesses under a
maternal aspect. She must have told hundreds of young officers that she
was old enough to be their mother; and she always said it looking
plaintively at the ceiling, when they squeezed her hand.

"It wasn't a very wonderful thing I did," said James, at last, "and it
was completely useless."

"No fine deed is useless," said the Vicar, sententiously.

James looked at him a moment, but proceeded with his story.

"It was only that I tried to save the life of a sub who'd just
joined--and didn't."

"Would you pass me the salt?" said Mrs. Clibborn.

"Mamma!" cried Mary, with a look as near irritation as her gentle nature
permitted.

"Go on, Jamie, there's a good boy," said Mrs. Parsons.

And James, seeing his father's charming, pathetic look of pride, told
the story to him alone. The others did not care how much they hurt him
so long as they could gape in admiration, but in his father he saw the
most touching sympathy.

"It was a chap called Larcher, a boy of eighteen, with fair hair and
blue eyes, who looked quite absurdly young. His people live somewhere
round here, near Ashford."

"Larcher, did you say?" asked Mrs. Clibborn, "I've never heard the name.
It's not a county family."

"Go on, Jamie," said Mary, with some impatience.

"Well, he'd only been with us three or four weeks; but I knew him rather
well. Oddly enough, he'd taken a sort of fancy to me. He was such a
nice, bright boy, so enthusiastic and simple. I used to tell him that
he ought to have been at school, rather than roughing it at the Cape."

Mrs. Clibborn sat with an idiotic smile on