“Why doesn’t Cousin Gervase ’list for a soldier?” Osy had asked one day as he sat by Sir Giles. “Why should he ’list for a soldier?” asked the old gentleman; though Dunning grew pale, and Lady Piercey looked up with a sharp “Eh?” not knowing what treason was to follow. Dunning knew what had been said on that subject in the servants’ hall, and divined that the child had heard and would state his authorities without hesitation. “Because----” said Osy--but then he made a pause--his mother’s eye was upon him, and, perhaps, though he had not the least idea what she feared and probably in childish defiance would have done that precisely had he known, yet this glance did give him pause; and he remembered that he had been told not to repeat what the servants said. The processes in a child’s mind are no less swift than those of a more calculating age. “Because,” said the boy, lingering, beginning to enjoy the suspense on all these faces, “because--it would make his back straight. Mamma says my back’s straight because the sergeant drilled me when I was a lickle, lickle boy.” “And the dear child is as straight as a rush, my lady,” said Parsons, who was, as so often, arranging Lady Piercey’s work. She, too, was grateful beyond measure to little Osy for not repeating the talk of the servants’ hall. “And what are you now, Osy,” cried Sir Giles, with a great laugh, “if you’re no longer a lickle, lickle boy?” “I’m the king of the castle,” said Osy, tilting at Dunning with the old gentleman’s stick. “Bedone, you dirty rascal; let’s play at you being the castle, Uncle Giles, and I’ll drive off the enemy. Bedone, you dirty rascal;--det away from my castle. I’ll be the sentry on the walls,” said the child, marching round and round with the stick over his shoulder for a gun, “and I’ll call out ‘Who does there?’ and ‘What’s the word’--and I’ll drive off all the enemy. But there must be a flag flying.” He called it a flap, but that did not matter. “Mamma, fix a flap upon my big tower. Here,” he cried, producing from his little pocket a crumpled rag of uncertain colour, “this hankechif will do.” “But that’s a flag of truce, Osy; are you going to give me up then?” said the old gentleman. “We’ll not have no flaps of truce,” said Osy, seizing Sir Giles’ red bandana, “for I means fightin’--and they sha’n’t come near you, but over my body. Here! Tome on, you enemy!” Osy’s thrusts at Dunning, who retreated outside a wider and a wider circle as the little soldier made his rounds, amused the old gentleman beyond measure. He laughed till, which was not very difficult, the water came to his eyes. “I do believe that mite would stand up for his old uncle if there was any occasion,” said Sir Giles, nodding his old head across at his wife, and trying in vain to recover the bandana to dry his old eyes.