Now the Captain of all these manoeuvres, as the meanest
intelligence will have observed, was Mrs. Ray. Mrs. Ray was Rupert's
mother, and as beautiful as every mother must be, who has an only
son, and is a widow. Moreover she was a perfect teller of stories:
all really beautiful mothers are. And, for years after, she used at
evening time to draw young Rupert against her knees, and tell him
the traditional stories of that old half-pay officer at Boulogne.
And grandfather was indeed a hero in these stories. We suspect--but
who can sound the artful depths of a woman who is at once young,
lovely, a mother, and a widow?--that Mrs. Ray, knowing that Rupert
could never recall his father, was determined that at least one
soldierly figure should loom heroic in his childish memories. She
would tell again and again how he asked repeatedly, as he lay dying,
for "that Rupert, the best of the lot." And her son would say: "I
s'pose he meant Daddy, mother." "Yes," she would answer. "You see,
you were all Ruperts: Grandfather Rupert Ray, Daddy Rupert Ray, and
Sonny Rupert Ray, my own little Sonny Ray." (Mothers talk in this
absurd fashion, and Mrs. Ray was the chief of such offenders.)

But quite the masterpiece of all her tales was this. One summer
morning, when the Boulogue promenade was bright and crowded and
lively, the Colonel was seated with his grandson beside him. A
little distance away sat Rupert's mother, who was just about as shy
of the Colonel as the Colonel was shy of her (which fact accounts,
probably, for Rupert Ray's growing up into the shy boy we knew).
Well, all of a sudden, the boy got up, stood immediately in front of
his grandsire, and leaned forward against his knees. There was no
mistaking the meaning in the child's eyes; they said plainly: "This
is entirely the best attitude for story-telling, so please."