That evening the only man that I knew in my carriage coming home was Barrington, and naturally I said something to him about the gallant son of my old friend. Barrington is not a man that I ever liked, and my young people say contemptuous things of his family as a whole. One of the daughters, however, is rather pretty, but I should not care to confess this at my own table. It is as dangerous to tell some girls about the prettiness of others as to tell some people that they look well. Anyway, since Barrington was there, I mentioned to him that it was gratifying to me to think that my old friend's son had become such a public hero, and I recollected as I was talking, and mentioned too, certain further incidents in the young fellow's boyhood. We once bathed together in Cornwall, I remembered, and I am not sure that it was not I who taught him to swim. At another time we had been on a picnic and I had made him and his sister laugh a good deal by my jokes--poor simple things, no doubt, but tickling to him. "And no doubt he is the same simple fellow now," I said, "always ready to laugh and be merry." I told Barrington also about the cherries and the torn clothes, and what a good appetite he had; and about the water-pistol. "Odd to think that that boy should grow into a hero," I said. "How little we can read the future!" "Yes, indeed," said Barrington. I don't know why, but talking about this young friend of long ago, now so illustrious, to Barrington, made me quite to like the man, and I even went out of my way to accompany him to his gate. I am wiser now. I now know that it is a mistake ever to change one's opinion of a man. And the extraordinary pettiness of human nature! the paltry little varieties of it! the straws it will clutch at to support its self-esteem! The next morning, owing to some delay over breakfast, I was a little late at the station and failed to get my usual seat among my usual set. I managed just to scramble into a carriage and subsided into the far corner with my paper well before my face because I did not want to be sociable in that company. One has to be careful. Just as the train started, in dashed Barrington and took the only seat left--in fact there was not really room for him. He did not see me. The train had not left the station before one of the men remarked upon the heroism of young Wargrave; when to my astonishment and annoyance Barrington at once took him up. "Ah! yes," he said. "Such a fine young fellow; I always knew he would do something like that." "Then you know him?" he was asked. "Well, I don't say that I exactly know him," he said, "but I used to hear a lot about him from one of the most intimate friends of the family."