It was his habit to turn off the bent of these conversations by drawing Temple into them.  Temple declared there was no feeling we were in a foreign country while he was our companion.  We simply enjoyed strange scenes, looking idly out of our windows.  Our recollection of the strangest scene ever witnessed filled us with I know not what scornful pleasure, and laughed in the background at any sight or marvel pretending to amuse us.  Temple and I cantered over the great Belgian battlefield, talking of Bella Vista tower, the statue, the margravine, our sour milk and black-bread breakfast, the little Princess Ottilia, with her ’It is my question,’ and ‘You were kind to my lambs, sir,’ thoughtless of glory and dead bones.  My father was very differently impressed.  He was in an exultant glow, far outmatching the bloom on our faces when we rejoined him.  I cried,

’Papa, if the prince won’t pay for a real statue, I will, and I’ll present it in your name!’

‘To the nation?’ cried he, staring, and arresting his arm in what seemed an orchestral movement.

‘To the margravine!’

He heard, but had to gather his memory.  He had been fighting the battle, and made light of Bella Vista.  I found that incidents over which a day or two had rolled lost their features to him.  He never smiled at recollections.  If they were forced on him noisily by persons he liked, perhaps his face was gay, but only for a moment.  The gaiety of his nature drew itself from hot-springs of hopefulness:  our arrival in England, our interviews there, my majority Burgundy, my revisitation of Germany—­these events to come gave him the aspect children wear out a-Maying or in an orchard.  He discussed the circumstances connected with the statue as dry matter-of-fact, and unless it was his duty to be hilarious at the dinner-table, he was hardly able to respond to a call on his past life and mine.  His future, too, was present tense:  ‘We do this,’ not ’we will do this’; so that, generally, no sooner did we speak of an anticipated scene than he was acting in it.  I studied him eagerly, I know, and yet quite unconsciously, and I came to no conclusions.  Boys are always putting down the ciphers of their observations of people beloved by them, but do not add up a sum total.

Our journey home occupied nearly eleven weeks, owing to stress of money on two occasions.  In Brussels I beheld him with a little beggar-girl in his arms.

‘She has asked me for a copper coin, Richie,’ he said, squeezing her fat cheeks to make cherries of her lips.

I recommended him to give her a silver one.

’Something, Richie, I must give the little wench, for I have kissed her, and, in my list of equivalents, gold would be the sole form of repayment after that.  You must buy me off with honour, my boy.’

I was compelled to receive a dab from the child’s nose, by way of a kiss, in return for buying him off with honour.