The other smiled gravely. "That is right," he said. "Capt. Davenport is my friend and knows what I am; but most English people want me to be some kind of prince from India. I am myself--a Canadian soldier. I don't want to play the monkey. Two-Blanket Sacobie was a big chief, with his salmon spear and sometimes nothing to eat. His squaw chopped the wood and carried the water. I am not a prince, nor I'm not a monkey. I come to the war, and the English people call me rajah; but the Englishman come to our country and hire me for a guide in the woods and call me a nigger. No, I am myself with what good I have in me. I can do to fight the Germans, and that is all I want, Dick. I try to be a gentleman, like Peter and Capt. Davenport, and the King will make me an officer. That is good. I will join the Royal Flying Corps. Then they will name me for what I am by what I do." Dick gripped Frank's right hand in a hearty clasp of respect and admiration. "You're a brick!" he said. "Jack was right when he said you were a deep thinker." "I got to think deep--deeper than you," said Frank. "I got to think all for myself, because my fathers didn't think at all." CHAPTER X DICK OBLIGES HIS FRIEND BOTH Hiram Sill and Frank Sacobie completed the cadet course and passed the final examinations. After one last fling at Washington and one more astounding suggestion to the War Office, Mr. Sill went back to France and his battalion and took command of a platoon. Mr. Sacobie transferred, with his new rank, to the Royal Flying Corps and immediately began another course of instruction. His brother officers decided that he was of a family of Italian origin. He did not bother his head about what they thought and applied himself with fervor to mastering the science of flying. Dick recovered his strength steadily. He saw Davenport frequently and the Kingstons still more frequently. His friendship with the Kingstons--particularly with Kathleen--deepened without a check. No two days ever went by consecutively without his seeing one or another of that family--usually one. On a certain Tuesday morning near the end of November he left the hospital at ten o'clock in high spirits. He had that morning discarded his last crutch and now moved along with the help of two big sticks. The dressing on his head was reduced to one thin strip of linen bound smoothly round just above the line of his eyebrows. It showed beneath his cap and gave him somewhat the air of a cheerful brigand. Though his left foot came into contact with the pavement very gingerly, he twirled one of the heavy sticks airily every now and again. Dick found Jack Davenport in the library. A woman and two little girls were leaving the library as he entered. The woman was poorly dressed, and her eyelids were red from recent tears--but now a look of relief, almost of joy, shone in her eyes. She turned on the threshold.