'You said a moment ago he was but a private, and now you call him
sergeant Barclay!'

'Well, where's the difference?'

'To be made sergeant shows that he was not a common man. If he had
been, he would not have been set over others!'

'Of course he was then, and is now, a very respectable man. If he were
not I should never have let you go and see him at all. But you must
learn to behave like the gentleman you are, and that you never will
while you frequent the company of your inferiors. Your manners are
already almost ruined--fit for no place but a farmhouse! There you
are, standing on the side of your foot again!--Old Barclay, I dare say,
tells you no end of stories about your mother!'

'He always asks after you, mother, and then never mentions you more.'

She knew perfectly that the boy spoke the truth.

'Don't let me hear of your being there again before you go to school!'
she said definitively. 'By the time you come home next year I trust
your tastes will have improved. Go and make yourself tidy for dinner. A
soldier's son must before everything attend to his dress.'

Francis went to his room, feeling it absolutely impossible to have told
his mother that he had been with Kirsty Barclay, that he had run a race
with her, and that she had left him alone at the foot of the Horn. That
he could not be open with his mother, no one that knew her unreasoning
and stormy temper would have wondered; but the pitiful boy, who did not