"'But he will come round in a few minutes,' he thought A few minutes
passed, however, and there was no sign. A few minutes more, and there
was a noise, a shout; Melchior looked up, and saw that the boy had
jumped through the open window into the road, and had been picked up
by the men in the dog-cart, and was gone.

"And so at last my hero was alone. At first he enjoyed it very much.
He shook out his hair, wrapped himself in the rug, stared through the
opera-glass, and did the fine gentleman very well indeed. But though
everyone allowed him to be the finest young fellow on the road, yet
nobody seemed to care for the fact as much as he did; they talked, and
complimented, and stared at him, but he got tired of it. For he could
not arrange his hair any better; he could not dispose the rug more
gracefully, or stare more perseveringly through the glass; and if he
could, his friends could do nothing more than they had done. In fact,
he got tired of the crowd, and found himself gazing through the
window, not to see his fine friends, but to try and catch sight of his
brothers and sisters. Sometimes he saw the youngest brother, looking
each time more wild and reckless; and sometimes the sister, looking
more and more miserable; but he saw no one else.

"At last there was a stir among the people, and all heads were turned
towards the distance, as if looking for something. Melchior asked what
it was, and was told that the people were looking for a man, the hero
of many battles, who had won honour for himself and for his country in
foreign lands, and who was coming home. Everybody stood up and gazed,
Melchior with them. Then the crowd parted, and the hero came on. No
one asked whether he were handsome or genteel, whether he kept good
company, or wore a tiger-skin rug, or looked through an opera-glass?
They knew what he had _done_, and it was enough.