But Ridydale was speaking a word aside to the serving man who opened, and paid no heed. Presently he stepped in, bidding Hugh follow, and then, leaving him alone in a dingy anteroom, he walked away with the servant. Seating himself on a bench by the wall Hugh tried to run over the morning’s events, and then to put them by and think only of what was before him: stable-boy, trooper one day, perhaps. Only it was not a good thing to hope forward to, so he drummed his finger-tips on the bench and wondered why Ridydale delayed. Just then there came a quick, light step outside the inner door. “Where is he?” a shrill voice cried. The door was kicked open, and there plunged in headlong a slim figure in blue. “Hugh, you scoundrel! Where have you been? Why did you not seek me out at first? Hang me if I be not glad to see you, old lad.” “Frankie Pleydall!” was all Hugh could get out for the arms about his neck that were near to strangling him. CHAPTER IX THE WAY TO WAR “That was friendly conduct of you!” Frank Pleydall, having ended his last hot tirade, suffered himself to fall back once more with his shoulders against one arm of his big chair and his legs hanging over the other. “I take it, had not that tall corporal of yours come hither and opened up the matter to us, you’d have gone sweat in a stable, eh? On your honor, Hugh, did you enjoy the life?” “Would you?” Hugh retorted, and then, as he looked at Frank’s curls and fair skin, the impossibility of his going through such experience came home to him. He shrugged his shoulders and, turning to the mirror, went on dragging the comb through his rebellious hair, rather slowly, for to be cleanly and freshly clad was an unwonted sensation, to enjoy which he was willing to dally a trifle in dressing. From time to time he paused to glance at Frank, who lounged and chatted, just as he had done in the old days at school, or to look about the dark room, with great bed and heavy furniture, that recalled to him his grandfather’s chamber at Everscombe. After all, he still felt at home in well-ordered life; “outcast” was not stamped upon him for all time. In Frank’s stockings and shirt, which was rather scant for him, and a certain Cornet Griffith’s gray breeches, and another officer’s half-worn shoes, swept up in the general levy Frank had made on the nearest wardrobes, he thought himself for a moment the same young gentleman who had left Everscombe a month before. Then, chancing to meet the blue eyes that looked back at him out of the mirror, he realized this was not the face he used to know; this face was thin, so the jaws seemed squarer, and there was a firmer set to the lips, and a new depth to the eyes. A slight cut on one cheek and a bruise above one eye he noted, too, without great resentment against those who had given them; such marks would pass quickly, he knew, but the endurance and obedience he had acquired with them would remain.