“I write to tell you we are safely here and I am quite well as I hope you are.  It is very hot, but we don’t do much work in the middle of the day and I like the place.  I wish you could see the flowers and the black men and the funny houses and the colored dresses of the people.  I am getting on, I hope, and my sergeant told me the other day I might get the stripe soon if I liked.  I will keep a lookout as you told me for Master Dudley’s father, but they say India is a bigger place than England, which I don’t believe, for we’re the grandest nation in the world, and the biggest and the best, all of us in the barrack-room agree to that.  I saw a scorpion to-day which pinches when it catches you and draws the blood awful.  There is a mountain battery with us now, and they use mules instead of horses, the hills are higher than those at home and it’s hard work going up.  There is not any fighting yet, but I am ready for it when it comes, and will do my duty to the Queen and you.  My chum has helped me write this letter and I hope it pleases you.  I am trying to endure hardness.  Good-bye, Master Roy,

   “Your faithful Rob.

   “God bless you.”

“That’s a much nicer letter, isn’t it?” said Roy, in great delight; “that is quite as long as the one I sent him.  I hope he will get some fighting soon.”

“Supposing if he does, and gets killed?” suggested Dudley.

But Roy put this thought away from him.

“I’ve known such lots of soldiers in books that come home, that I think he will.  Besides God will take care of him.  Do you remember the picture gallery at the general’s the other day, Dudley?”

“Yes, what about it?”

“I was thinking about that soldier there with all his medals who broke his mother’s heart; and then about the soldier boy the general said was the bravest.  I suppose I would rather Rob was properly brave like that, than do great things in battle; but I should think he might do both, don’t you think so?”

And Dudley nodded, adding, “Rob won’t drink or gamble, I’m quite sure.”

XVI

DAVID AND JONATHAN

Easter came, and to the boys’ great delight Roy was so much stronger that it was settled he might accompany Dudley to a private boarding school for one term.  Thanks were due to Miss Bertram for this arrangement; and she had great difficulty in obtaining her mother’s consent to it.

“I am sure the boys will get on best together; Roy will have a better chance of growing strong if he is with Dudley than if he is to mope by himself here.  If we find he does not keep well, we can have him home again; and from all we hear of the school, the boys are most carefully looked after.”

And certainly to judge from Roy’s appearance and spirits, this plan seemed most successful.  It was a bright morning in April.  The air was cold but dry, and the old garden was sweet with the scent of hyacinths and narcissuses.  Bright beds of tulips and polyanthuses bordered the green lawn, and old Hal was surveying the results of his work with pride and satisfaction.  Miss Bertram, in her leather gloves and garden apron, was busy in and out of the hothouses; and the boys, after scampering round in every one’s way, had at last scrambled up to their favorite seat on the garden wall.