Old General Cochrane frowned thoughtfully. "Curious," was what he said. "It's psychology of course, but I'm hanged if I know the explanation. However, since it's so, my child, I'm glad. A man as old as I makes few new friends. And a beautiful young woman--with a brain--and charm--and innocent eyes--and French clothes!" One may guess if I tried to stop this description. I could have listened all night. With that: "'Did I know Kitchener!' the child asked," reflected the General, and threw back his splendid head and laughed. I stared up, my heart pumping. Then, "Well, rather. Why, little Miss Fox--" and he stopped. "I've a mind to tell the child a fairy-story," he said. "A true fairy-story which is so extraordinary that few have been found to believe it, even of those who saw it happen." He halted again. "Tell me!" General Coehrane looked about the roomful of people and tossed out his hand. "In this mob?" he objected. "It's too long a story in any case. But why shouldn't you and I have a seance, to let a garrulous old fellow talk about his youth?" he demanded in his lordly way. "Why not come out on the river in my boat? They'll let you play about with an octogenarian, won't they?" "I'll come," I answered the General eagerly. "Very good. Tomorrow. Oh, by George, no. That confounded Prime Minister comes down to me tomorrow. I detest old men," said General Cochrane. "Well, then, the day after?" The Thames was a picture-book river that day, gay with row-boats and punts and launches, yet serene for all its gaiety; slipping between grassy banks under immemorial trees with the air of a private stream wandering, protected, through an estate. The English have the gift above other nations of producing an atmosphere of leisure and seclusion, and surely there is no little river on earth so used and so unabused as the Thames. Of all the craft abroad that bright afternoon, General Cochrane's white launch with its gold line above the water and its gleaming brass trimmings was far and away the prettiest, and I was bursting with pride as we passed the rank and file on the stream and they looked at us admiringly. To be alive on such a day in England was something; to be afloat on the silvery Thames was enchantment; to be in that lovely boat with General Cochrane, the boy Donald Cochrane, was a rapture not to be believed without one's head reeling. Yet here it was happening, the thing I should look back upon fifty, sixty years from now, an old gray woman, and tell my grandchildren as the most interesting event of my life. It was happening, and I was enjoying every second, and not in the least awed into misery, as is often the case with great moments. For the old officer was as perfect a playmate as any good-for-nothing young subaltern in England, and that is putting it strongly.