tley, "and how shamefully regardless
of the feelings of his mother, for of course if he had a mother, and if
she were a woman of right feeling, she must have been horrified!"

"I am afraid, Madame, that you would have esteemed her a lady of wrong
feeling, for she applauded her boy, and used to say that if he only took
care to acquire as much moral as he had physical courage, so as to
become as brave and bold a soldier of the Cross as he was sure to be of
the Crown, he would resemble his own father, who was the best and
bravest man that ever lived."

"How strange!" murmured Mrs Stoutley, "such inconsistencies! But there
does seem to be a considerable number of masculine women in the world,
who encourage what we call muscular Christianity."

"Yes, there are indeed strange inconsistencies around us," returned the
Count. "You have, however, mistaken the character of this particular
mother, for she was the reverse of masculine, being delicate, and
tender-hearted, and refined, and ladylike, while her boy was bold as a
lion--yet obedient and gentle to her as a lamb. He afterwards became a
soldier, and on the occasion of a wild storm on the east coast of
England he swam off to a wreck with a rope, when no man in the place
could be got to do it for love or money, and was the means of rescuing
four women and six men, in accomplishing which, however, he lost his
life."

"Oh, how shocking! how _very_ sad!" said Mrs Stoutley, startled into
animation by the suddenness of the revelation, "and how different it
might have been if the youth had been trained to gentler amusements. He
might have been alive now."

"Yes," returned the Count, "and the four women and six men might have
been dead! But here come two friends who are better able to give an
opinion on the point than I am."

"What may the pint be?" asked Captain Wopper, with a genial smile, as if
he were ready to tackle anything from a pint of beer to a "pint" of the
compass. "Only state your case, Mrs Stoutley, an' the Professor here,
he'll act the judge, an' I'll be the jury."

"The jury is too small," said Lewis, coming up at that moment.

"Small, young man!" repeated the Captain, with feigned surprise, as he
drew himself up to his full height and squared his broad shoulders.

"Not physically, but numerically," retorted Lewis, with a laugh--"ho!
Emma, Miss Horetzki, Lawrence, Slingsby," he called to the quartette,
who sat chatting in a bay window, "you are hereby