new-fangled under windows so narrow and high up, and within walls so
thick: without a fire it was always cold. The carpet was very dingy,
and the mirrors were much spotted; but the poverty of the room was the
respectable poverty of age: old furniture had become fashionable just
in time to save it from being metamorphosed by its mistress into a show
of gay meanness and costly ugliness. A good fire of mingled peat and
coal burned bright in the barrel-fronted steel grate, and shone in the
brass fender. The face of the boy continued to look very red in the
glow, but still its colour came more from within than from without: he
cherished the memory of his father, and did not love his mother more
than a little.

'He has told me a great deal more about my father than ever you did,
mother!' he answered.

'Well he may have!' she returned. 'Your father was not a young man when
I married him, and they had been together through I don't know how many
campaigns.'

'And you say he was not my father's friend!'

'Not his _friend_, Frank; his servant--what do they call them?--his
orderly, I dare say; certainly not his friend.'

'Any man may be another man's friend!'

'Not in the way you mean; not that his son should go and see him every
other day! A dog may be a man's good friend, and so was sergeant
Barclay your father's--very good friend that way, I don't doubt!'