“If you give me more details, perhaps I can advise you.”

“Well, granny, may I talk first to Dudley about it, and then I’ll tell you.  But you see it’s like this—­the person wants to please you, and you can’t pretend to be pleased if he does what doesn’t please you!”

“I think the best plan would be to leave yourself out of the question entirely, and only think of the other person; that would be the most unselfish way.”

Roy knitted his brows and heaved a heavy sigh.

“Am I a very selfish person, granny?”

“You are much more selfish than Dudley is,” said Mrs. Bertram, decidedly, who never minced matters with her grandsons.

Roy flushed a deep crimson, and his grandmother added,

“I do not say that you are altogether to blame, for Dudley has always given way to you and spoiled you; but you do not very often think of his wishes before your own.”

“No, I never do.”

Roy’s tone was of the deepest dejection; but the sudden entrance of Dudley gave a turn to the conversation, and he gradually recovered his spirits.

When the two boys were at their tea half an hour later, Roy spread the whole matter before Dudley who looked at it in quite a different light.

“How stunning!  And is he really going?  Hurray!  One of us will be a soldier, at any rate.  I wish I was big enough to go with him.”

“But I don’t want him to go, and I told him so, and he isn’t going!”

Dudley opened his eyes at this.

“You going to keep him back?  Why you’re the one that’s always talking about serving the Queen, and fighting for her!”

“Yes, I should like to, but—­but Rob is different.  I want him to be with me.”

“Then you don’t care about serving the Queen, if you’re going to do her out of a soldier who might fight for her!”

This was quite a new aspect of the affair.

“You think I’m like the dog in the manger?  I can’t go myself and I don’t want him to.  But if you go to a boarding school like Aunt Judy talks of, and I’m not allowed to go with you, and Rob is gone, I shall be left all alone; and I hate being alone, you don’t know how I hate it—­I think I should die!”

“Well, if I was you and knew I couldn’t be a soldier myself, I would love to send some one instead of me—­you know how they do in France.  Old Selby was telling us.  They pay a subsidy—­substitute—­don’t you call it?—­to go and fight for them.”

“Yes, that is the coward’s way,” Roy said, scornfully.

He paused for a minute, and then his eyes flashed fire.

“Yes, Dudley, I’ll let him go.  It’s me that’s the coward to try and keep him back!  You and I shall send him, and he shall be our substitute, and when we hear of him doing brave things, we shall feel it’s ourselves.  And we’ll make him write letters to us and tell us all he is doing—­oh, it will be splendid.  How glad I am he has learned to read and write.  Dudley, you just go and fetch him in, will you?”