I wonder why he told me.  Probably, as is the case in most things which most people do, from a mixture of impulses.  For one thing I am an American girl, with a fresher zest to hear tales of those titanic days than the people or the children of the people who lived through them.  Also the great war of 1914 has stirred me since I was old enough to know about it, and I have read everything concerning it which I could lay hands on, and talked to everyone who had knowledge of it.  Also, General Cochrane and I made friends from the first minute.  I was a quite unimportant person of twenty-four years, he a magnificent hero of eighty, one of the proud figures of England; it made me a bit dizzy when I saw that he liked me.  One feels, once in a long time, an unmistakable double pull, and knows that oneself and another are friends, and not age, color, race nor previous condition of servitude makes the slightest difference.  To have that happen with a celebrity, a celebrity whom it would have been honor enough simply to meet, is quite dizzying.  This was the way of it.

I was staying with my cousin Mildred Ward, an Atlanta girl who married Sir Cecil Ward, an English baronet of Oxfordshire.  I reached Martin-Goring on a day in July just in time to dress for dinner.  When I came down, a bit early, Milly looked me over and pronounced favorably.

“You’re not so hard to look at,” she pronounced.  “It takes an American really to wear French clothes.  I’m glad you’re looking well tonight, because one of your heroes—­Oh!”

She had floated inconsequently against a bookcase in a voyage along the big room, and a spray of wild roses from a vase on the shelf caught in her pretty gold hair.

“Oh—­why does Middleton stick those catchy things up there?” she complained, separating the flowers from her hair, and I followed her eyes above the shelf.

“Why, that’s a portrait of Kitchener—­the old great Kitchener, isn’t it?” I asked.  “Did he belong to Cecil’s people?”

“No,” answered Milly, “only Cecil’s grandfather and General Cochrane—­or something—­” her voice trailed.  And then, “I’ve got somebody you’ll be crazy about tonight, General Cochrane.”

“General Cochrane?”

“Oh!  You pretend to know about the great war and don’t know General Cochrane, who saved England when the fleet was wrecked.  Don’t know him!”

“Oh!” I said again.  “Know him?  Know him!  I know every breath, he drew.  Only I couldn’t believe my ears.  The boy Donald Cochrane?  It isn’t true is it?  How did you ever, ever—?”

“He lives five miles from us,” said Milly, unconcernedly.  “We see a lot of him.  His wife was Cecil’s great-aunt.  She’s dead now.  His daughter is my best friend.  ’The boy Donald Cochrane’!” She smiled a little.  “He’s no boy now.  He’s old.  Even heroes do that—­get old.”

And with that the footman at the door announced “General Cochrane.”