Thus it happened, that seven years after his bereavement, Lord Ormont and Philippa and Bobby were on the famous Bernese Terrace, grandest of terrestrial theatres where soul of man has fronting him earth’s utmost majesty.  Sublime:  but five minutes of it fetched sounds as of a plug in an empty phial from Bobby’s bosom, and his heels became electrical.

He was observed at play with a gentleman of Italian complexion.  Past guessing how it had come about, for the gentleman was an utter stranger.  He had at any rate the tongue of an Englishman.  He had the style, too, the slang and cries and tricks of an English schoolboy, though visibly a foreigner.  And he had the art of throwing his heart into that bit of improvised game, or he would never have got hold of Bobby, shrewd to read a masker.

Lugged-up by the boy to my lord and the young lady, he doffed and bowed.  ‘Forgive me, pray,’ he said; ’I can’t see an English boy without having a spin with him; and I make so bold as to speak to English people wherever I meet them, if they give me the chance.  Bad manners?  Better than that.  You are of the military profession, sir, I see.  I am a soldier, fresh from Monte Video.  Italian, it is evident, under an Italian chief there.  A clerk on a stool, and hey presto plunged into the war a month after, shouldering a gun and marching.  Fifteen battles in eighteen months; and Death a lady at a balcony we kiss hands to on the march below.  Not a bit more terrible!  Ah, but your pardon, sir,’ he hastened to say, observing rigidity on the features of the English gentleman; ’would I boast?  Not I. Accept it as my preface for why I am moved to speak the English wherever I meet them:—­Uruguay, Buenos Ayres, La Plata, or Europe.  I cannot resist it.  At least, he bent gracefully, ’I do not.  We come to the grounds of my misbehaviour.  I have shown at every call I fear nothing, kiss hand of welcome or adieu to Death.  And I, a boy of the age of this youngster—­he ’s not like me, I can declare!—­I was a sneak and a coward.  It follows, I was a liar and a traitor.  Who cured me of that vileness, that scandal?  I will tell you—­an Englishman and an Englishwoman:  my schoolmaster and his wife.  My schoolmaster—­my friend!  He is the comrade of his boys:  English, French, Germans, Italians, a Spaniard in my time—­a South American I have sent him—­two from Boston, Massachusetts—­and clever!—­all emulous to excel, none boasting.  But, to myself; I was that mean fellow.  I did—­I could let you know:  before this young lady—­she would wither me with her scorn, Enough, I sneaked, I lied.  I let the blame fall on a schoolfellow and a housemaid.  Oh! a small thing, but I coveted it—­a scarf.  It reminded me of Rome.  Enough, there at the bottom of that pit, behold me.  It was not discovered, but my schoolfellow was unpunished, the housemaid remained in service; I thought, I thought, and I thought until I could not look in my dear friend Matthew’s face.  He said to me one day: