"Come and see me in bed, mother," was his regular appeal after his good-night kiss. And I went, and after hearing him say his prayers I knelt down by his bedside and talked to him, sometimes for a whole hour. Not that he and I had long talks at these particular times only. All day long, until his school days came, we were together. I never talked down to him or tried to make myself a child for him. It was he who was always trying to reach up to me. When I brushed my hair or looked over my clothes or dressed for some affair or other, he was in my room always and I talked to him in French, until he came to know in a tender easy way that tongue which has been of so much use to him in this past year of the War, when, as adjutant, and as Mess President of his battalion, he has needed to do a good deal of talking with people who haven't a word of English. He would hear me repeating snatches of poetry, too, and afterwards, when he was alone, he could be heard saying them over to himself in a way which showed that he perfectly grasped their meaning. He walked with me, drove with me, watched me at my work, and, as soon as he was able to read, began to read to me. For I had hurt my eyes by overwork then and could not read to myself. It was my Compensation for having him and for having at the same time a little--a very little--worldly success. This belief in Compensation has become a part of my life now and stops my natural gaiety. I have never had a happy day yet or a whole-hearted laugh without paying for it. This is what makes me afraid now that Yeogh Wough is coming home on his second leave. A man who is fighting for his country does not come home unwounded on his second leave without something happening. Oh, if people would only see this and take care! But they are blind to instances of it that are about them every day. Lord Roberts bought his Boer War successes with the death of his son. Lieutenant Warneford paid for his double V.C. with his life when he next went up into the air. And so on. At night, when I knelt by Yeogh Wough's bedside till my knees were sore, the things we talked of were different. We put Henley and Browning and Stevenson and others of their kind aside then and I spoke to him of what boyhood means and what manhood means; of the glories of manly work, such as engineering, shipbuilding, inventing, and the need for hard striving and straight living. "You must never be feeble, Little Yeogh Wough. Feebleness is a thing that nobody can forgive, except in old people and children. It's better to be strong in doing bad things than not strong at all. But you'll get to know when you grow up that badness is only a funny kind of weakness. You must be strong. Look at Kitchener! He's got on by being strong and thorough. They say that when the rails came for the building of the Soudan railway he examined every yard of metal himself, not trusting to other people. That's thoroughness." I taught him what patriotism means.