Page:Christopher Wren--the wages of virtue.djvu/163

Rh expect him to be anything else than the son of his father and his eccentric and adventurous House?

"I wouldn't have you be anything but a chip of the old block, my darling boy. You're of age and your old mother isn't going to be a millstone round your neck, like she's been round your father's. Only one woman can have the right to be that, and you will give her the right when you marry her. … Your family really ought not to marry."

"Mother, Mother!" he had protested, "and 'bring up our children to do the same,' I suppose?"

She had been bravely gay when he went, albeit a little damp of eye and red of nose.… Really he was a lucky chap to have such a mother. She was one in a thousand and he must faithfully do his utmost to keep his promise and go home once a year or thereabouts—also "to take care of his nails, not crop his hair, change damp socks, and wear wool next his skin.…" Want a bit of doin' in the Legion, what! Good job the poor darling couldn't see Luigi Rivoli breaking up recruits, or Sergeant Legros superintending the ablutions of her Reginald. What would she think of this galley and his fellow galley-slaves—of 'Erb, the Apache, Carmelita, the Grasshopper, and the drunkards of the Canteen? The Bucking Bronco would amuse her, and she'd certainly be interested in John Bull, poor old chap…. What could his story be, and why was he here? Was there a woman in it? … Probably. He didn't look the sort of chap who'd "done something." Poor devil! … Yes, her big warm heart would certainly have a corner for John Bull. Had she not been well brought up by her husband and son in the matter of seeing a