"Er--yes. Is that lamp smoking, Rowsley? You might turn it
down a trifle, I can't reach."

"Let me, let me?-- What was he like?"

"Who--Hyde? Oh," said Val vaguely, "he was like the rest of us
--very tired."

"Tired?" echoed Isabel with a blank face, "but, Val darling, he
couldn't have been only tired! What should you think he was like
when he wasn't tired?"

"That is a question I have occasionally asked myself," Val
answered with his faint indecipherable smile. "My dear child,
I only saw him once or twice. He was a senior captain and
commanded his company. I was a very junior lieutenant."

"Still he was there at the time," reflected Isabel. "O Rose! if
he's anything like nice, which is almost past praying for in
Major Clowes' cousin, let's beguile him into the gooseberry
bushes and make him tell us all about it! Val is very dear to
his family, but no one, however tenderly attached to him, could
call him a brilliant raconteur. Now Mr. Hyde won't have any
modest scruples. Val, if there is a slug in that lettuce I wish
you would say so. It would hurt my feelings less than for you to
sit looking at it in a stony silence. Was he good-looking?"

"Possibly he might be," said Val, "when he scraped the dirt off."
After a moment he added, "He was very decent to me."