t-rack and said, "the Colonel had eaten
nothing of a breakfast to travel on." But next morning, I met her in
another mood. It was a mood to which we were not strangers, though it
did not often occur. In brief, Martha (like many another invaluable
domestic) "had a temper of her own"; but to do her justice her ill
feelings generally expended themselves in a rage for work, and in taking
as little ease herself as she allowed to other people. I knew what it
meant when I found her cleaning the best silver when she ought to have
been eating her breakfast; but my head was so full of the Colonel, that
I could not help talking about him, even if the temptation to tease
Martha had not been overwhelming. No reply could I extract; only once,
as she passed swiftly to the china cupboard, with the whole Crown Derby
tea and coffee service on one big tray (the Colonel had praised her
coffee), I heard her mutter--"Soldiers is very upsetting." Certainly,
considering what she did in the way of scolding, scouring, blackleading,
polishing and sand-papering that week, it was not Martha's fault if we
did not "get straight again," furniture and feelings. I've heard her say
that Calais sand would "fetch anything off," and I think it had fetched
the Colonel off her heart by the time that the cleaning was done.

It had no such effect on mine. Lewis Lorraine himself did not worship
his uncle more devoutly than I. Colonel Jervois had given me a new
ideal. It was possible, then, to be enthusiastic without being unmanly;
to live years out of England, and come back more patriotic than many
people who stayed comfortably at home; to go forth into the world and be
the simpler as well as the wiser, the softer as well as the stronger for
the experience? So it seemed. And yet Lewis had told me, with such tears
as Snuffy never made him shed, how tender his uncle was to his
unworthiness, what allowances he made for the worst that Lewis could say
of himself, and what hope he gave him of a good and happy future.

"He cried as bad as I did," Lewis said, "and begged me to forgive him
for having trusted so much to my other guardian. Do you know, Jack,
Snuffy regularly forged a letter like my handwriting, to answer that one
Uncle Eustace wrote, which he kept back? He might well do such good
copies, and write the year of Our Lord with a swan at the end of the
last flourish! And you remember what we heard about his having been in
prison--but, oh, dear! I don't want to