Canada, Australia, New Zealand, sprang to their feet like obedient children, ready and anxious to fight and die for their mother at her first call.

Billy and his father faced each other—­one was sixteen, the other forty.  They did not stand looking at each other as father and son, but as man and man.

“Billy,” said his father, “you don’t remember your mother; she died while you were still a baby.  If she were living, I would not hint of this to you, but—­I go to South Africa with the very first Canadian contingent.  You are the best bugler in Canada.  What do you want to do?”

For an instant Billy was speechless.  His nerves shook with a boy’s first fear of battle.  His old gun-shyness had him in its grip.  Then his heart swelled with the pride aroused by his father’s words; he raised his head, his chin, his eyes, and suddenly his look caught a picture hanging in its deep gold frame on the wall.  It was a picture of a little old gray-haired woman—­a sad-faced old woman dressed in black and wearing a widow’s cap.  It was a picture of Queen Victoria.

Then Billy’s voice came.

“I can’t remember ever having heard my mother speak, but”—­pointing to the picture—­“she has been calling me ever since the war began.  I know I’m only a big kid, and I can’t fight with the men, but I can bugle, and, Dad, you and I’ll go together.”

Once more they looked at each other as man to man.  Then Billy’s father shook hands with him—­a hard, true, clinging shake—­and, without a word, left the room.

Oh, what a day it was for the little city when the picked men of the regiment marched out in their khaki uniforms, halting at the railway station for all the last good-byes before the train pulled them out eastward, to board the transport ships that swung so impatiently in Halifax harbor!  The whole town was at the station, every boy in the place shouting and cheering and wishing he were grown up, were clad in khaki, were shouldering an Enfield rifle, and were going to fight for the queen.  When it was all over Bert and Tommy stood watching with straining eyes the fast disappearing train, handkerchiefs and caps and hands were waving from every window, faint snatches of cheers, and the tune of “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” came floating backward.  But the boys only saw a small blotch of khaki color on the rear platform of the train, and a brilliant point of light where the golden Canada sun flung back its reflections from a well-polished bugle.  They watched that light growing less and less in the distance, until it finally faded like a setting star.

* * * * * * * *

Weeks afterwards the newspapers rang with the glory of it all.  The fame and the bravery of the Canadian regiments at the terrible battle of Paardeburg was known to all the world.  Bert and Tommy and the rest of the boys devoured every line that touched on that wonderful fight, but their pride fairly broke bounds when in the great city papers they read this description: