He had lived through the Boer War, though it had found him hardly more than four years old. He had seen a woman burst into tears in the street when a regiment of Highlanders swung past, and I had told him why she had done so and all about Magersfontein. I had told him the story of the American Civil War, lighting it up with such things as the story of the play "Secret Service." I had put great figures up as models for him, and among them was the figure of Cecil Rhodes. I had taught him that the least little thing he did, even so small a thing as the mending of a toy, must be done thoroughly, because he was British born and had the British repute to keep up. And then together, he with his curly head on the pillow and his hand clasping mine as I knelt beside the bed, we would repeat poems by Newbolt and Conan Doyle and Quiller Couch. The one he came to love best was Newbolt's "Vitæ Lampada" with those lines:-- "The sand of the desert is sodden red, Red with the wreck of a square that broke; The Gatling's jammed and the Colonel's dead, And the regiment's blind with dust and smoke; The river of death has brimmed its banks, And England's far and honour's a name; But the voice of a schoolboy rallies the ranks: 'Play up! Play up! And play the game'!" "Do you understand this, Little Yeogh Wough? You are not likely ever to be a soldier, but you have got to carry all this out in ordinary life, as much as in war." "This is the word that, year by year, While in her place the School is set, Every one of her sons must hear, And none that hears it dares forget; This they all, with a joyful mind, Bear through life like a torch in flame; And, falling, fling to the hosts behind: 'Play up! Play up! And play the game!'" Oh, yes! Yes! I was making him a soldier with every day and night that passed. But I did not know it. Ah! If I could have looked forward and seen myself as I am to-night, sitting here waiting for him to come home from the trenches on his second leave! "You don't want me to be a real soldier when I grow up, do you, mother?" he asked me. "Well, no, dear, I don't think I do. I don't think it will be enough for you to occupy all your mind with. You see, soldiering is an ornamental affair with us. It isn't as if we made a thorough business of it, as the Germans do--though, when I had the good luck the other evening to meet the biggest military man of to-day and have a talk with him, he said it was one of our worst mistakes to think that no brains are wanted in the Army. He said we want all the best brains we can get, and the more of them the better." Sometimes, when I left the boy, after tucking him in and pulling back his curtains and opening his window, I met the sturdy Old Nurse, who had been lying in wait for me.