A wish from their mother was a command, always obeyed, as he obeyed it now. She was a very handsome woman. She had been the celebrated Miss Cresitter and she never forgot it. She had been a toast, and queened it accordingly. Her portrait had been painted by an extremely fashionable and very indifferent painter and it hung in her room, the best in the house. She wore a beautiful lace fichu and black lace mittens, and the lines of her face were hard. Her hair was done in ringlets on either side of her face and drawn up into a knot at the back of her head. In front it was parted in the middle and plentifully oiled. The furniture in the room was handsome and ponderous, and there was nowhere an indication of any sort of recognition of the loveliness of the view from the window. Francis stood, as he had been trained to do in his mother's presence, and waited for her to speak. She was in no hurry and kept him standing, and when she spoke he was startled, as he never failed to be, by the rich tones of her voice. It was a magnificent voice, and she knew it and used it caressingly, lingering on her favourite notes, which she threw cunningly upon the open vowels. Francis was a fine word for her purposes. She might have put a world of affection into her intonation of it, but that seems never to have occurred to her. It never occurred to Francis either. "Francis," she said, "I have been thinking." This called for no reply and Francis made none. "I do not think," she went on, "that you are altogether suitable for the army. You are too gentle. You cannot say 'No.' You are--how shall I say it?--too emotional, too much given to dreams. The life of a soldier is stern and calls for resolution. The Folyats are, and always have been, weak. There have been exceptions it is true, but I have never seen any indication that you are one of them." Francis was cut to the quick, but he had never in his life doubted the truth of anything his mother said, and, when she pointed out the temptations of a soldier's life, he began to see himself as a feeble will-less wastrel utterly unfitted to wear the king's uniform. Better never to wear it than to disgrace it! It was quite as easy for him to see himself in this light as to dream heroically of warlike deeds and successful prowess. His mother played upon his foible and stripped him mercilessly of red coat, sword, epaulets, cocked hat, and glorious future. He capitulated and agreed that he was incapable of saying "No," and was therefore unfitted to take up the commission so kindly obtained for him by his cousin Bampfield.