all.' He rubbed his hands. 'I
for one am proud of it.'

'Far be it from me to blame you, my dear sir. Or there's the alternative
of taking him to stand for your sole great festival holiday, and
worshipping him as the personification of your Derbyshire race.'

A glittering look was in Captain Con's eye to catch Rockney if he would
but rise to it.

That doughty Saxon had been half listening, half chatting to Mr.
Mattock, and wore on his drawn eyelids and slightly drawn upper lip a
look of lambent pugnacity awake to the challenge, indifferent to the
antagonist, and disdainful of the occasion.

'We have too little of your enthusiasm for the flag,' Philip said to Mr.
Rumford to soothe him, in a form of apology for his relative.

'Surely no! not in England?' said Mr. Rumford, tempted to open his
heart, for he could be a bellicose gentleman by deputy of the flag. He
recollected that the speaker was a cousin of Captain Con's, and withdrew
into his wound for safety. 'Here and there, perhaps; not when we are
roused; we want rousing, we greatly prefer to live at peace with the
world, if the world will let us.'

'Not at any price?' Philip fancied his tone too quakerly.

'Indeed I am not one of that party!' said Mr. Rumford, beginning to
glow; but he feared a snare, and his wound drew him in again.

'When are you ever at peace!' quoth his host, shocked by the
inconsiderate punctuality of Mrs. Adister O'Donnell's household, for
here was the coffee coming round, and Mattock and Rockney escaping
without a scratch. 'There's hardly a day in the year when your scarlet
mercenaries are not popping at niggers.'

Rockney had the flick on the cheek to his manhood now, it might be
hoped.

'Our what?' asked Mr. Rumford, honestly unable to digest the opprobrious
term.

'Paid soldiery, hirelings, executioners, whom you call volunteers, by
a charming euphemism, and send abroad to do the work of war while you
propound the doctrines of peace at home.'

Rockney's forehead was exquisitely eruptive, red and swelling. Mattock
lurched on his chair. The wine was in them, and the captain commended
the spiriting of it, as Prospero his Ariel.

Who should intervene at this instant but the wretched Philip, pricked
on the point of honour as a soldier! Are we inevitably to be thwarted by
our own people?

'I suppose we all work for pay,' said he. 'It seems to me a cry of the
streets to call us by hard names. The question is what we fight for.'