CHAPTER ELEVEN.

Joined to the love of a military life, I had all a boy's ideal notions
of bravery and chivalry. By which I mean the frank, natural, outside
ideas, full of the show and glitter, and I could not see beneath the
surface. I did not know then that it might take more courage to refuse
to fight and face the looks and scorn of some people than to go and meet
an adversary in the field, after the braggart fashion of some of our
French neighbours, whose grand idea of honour is to go out early some
morning to meet an enemy about some petty, contemptible quarrel, fence
for a few moments till one or the other is pricked or scratched, and
then cry, "_Ah, mon ami! mon ami_!" embrace, and go home to breakfast
together.

Very beautiful, no doubt, to a certain class of Frenchman, but to a
nineteenth-century Englishman--fluff.

I'm afraid that I was very Gallic in my ideas in more ways, so that when
next morning I knew that both Brace and Barton had had long interviews
separately with Major Lacey, and then met him together in the presence
of the doctor, and found that a peace had been patched up, my feelings
toward Brace were very much cooled, and I was ready to become fast
friends with Barton--at least, I could have been if he had been a
different kind of man. As it was, I was thrown a great deal on the
society of the doctor and the other officers, while Brace, who rightly
interpreted my coolness, held himself aloof at mess.

I found myself near the major that evening, and after a time he began
chatting to me in a low tone.

"Let's see; you were in the squabble yesterday," he said. "Great pity.
We don't want any references to head-quarters, Vincent, nor
court-martial; and as for their fighting, that sort of thing's as dead
as Queen Anne. We've got to keep our fighting for the Queen's enemies,
eh?"

"I suppose so, sir."

"Of course you suppose so," he said sharply. "Why, you did not want
them to fight, did you?"

"That, it seems to me, would have been the most honourable course, sir,"
I said stiffly.

He turned his head and stared in my face.

"You're a young goose--gander, I mean. No: gosling," he said. "There,
I've made them shake hands, after Barton had apologised. I'm not going
to have any of that nonsense. And look here, you've got to be friends
with Barton too. Why, hang it, boy, a handful of Englishmen here, as we
are, in the midst of enemies, can't afford to quarrel among ourselves;
w