ple would have a good long look at him, then,"
put in the mother with earnestness underlying the jest of her tone. "The
poor boy will never pass those exams in the world. It IS ridiculous,
as his father always said. If there ever was a man who was made for a
soldier, it's Balder. He's a gentleman, and he's connected by tradition
with the Army, and he's mad about everything military--and surely he's
as clever as anybody else at everything except that wretched matter
of books, and even there it's only a defect of memory--and yet that
suffices to prevent his serving his Queen. And all over England there
are young gentlemen like that--the very pick of the hunting-fields,
strong and brave as lions, fit to lead men anywhere, the very men
England wants to have fighting her battles--and they can't get places
in the Army because--what was it Balder came to grief over last
time?--because they can't remember whether it's Ispahan or Teheran
that's the capital of Persia.

"They are the fine old sort that would go and capture both places at the
point of the bayonet--and find out their names afterward--but it seems
that's not what the Army wants nowadays. What is desired now is superior
clerks, and secretaries and professors of languages--and much good they
will do us when the time of trouble comes!"

"Then you think the purchase-system was better?" asked the American
lady. "It always seemed to me that that must have worked so curiously."

"Prefer it?" said Lady Plowden. "A thousand times yes! My husband made
one of the best speeches in the debate on it--one do I say?--first and
last he must have made a dozen of them. If anything could have kept
the House of Lords firm, in the face of the wretched Radical outcry, it
would have been those speeches. He pointed out all the evils that
would follow the change. You might have called it prophetic--the way
he foresaw what would happen to Balder--or not Balder in particular, of
course, but that whole class of young gentlemen.

"As he said, you have only to ask yourself what kind of people the lower
classes naturally look up to and obey and follow. Will they be ordered
about by a man simply because he knows Greek and Latin and Hebrew? Do
they respect the village schoolmaster, for example, on account of his
learning? Not in the very slightest! On the contrary, they regard him
with the greatest contempt. The man they will serve is the man whose
birth gives him the right to command them, or els