"
"Captain Branscome is not telling you the half of it," I broke in
eagerly. "Every one in Falmouth knows him to be a hero. Why, he has
a sword of honour at home, given him for one of the bravest battles
ever fought!"
"Gently, boy--gently!" Captain Branscome corrected me, with a smile,
albeit a sad one. "Youth is generous, ladies; it sees these things
through a haze which colours and magnifies them, and--and it's a very
poor kind of hero you'll consider me before I have done. Where was
I? Ah, yes, to be sure--the banquet. His Worship can little have
guessed what his invitation meant to me, or that, while others
thanked him for a compliment, to me it offered a satisfying meal such
as I had not eaten for months. Mr. Stimcoe had given the school a
holiday. In short, I attended.
"I fear, ladies, that the food and the generous wine together must
have turned my head--there is no other explanation; for when the meal
was over and I sat listening to the speeches, but fumbling with a
glass of port before me, scarcely with the half-crown in my pocket
which must carry me over another week's house-keeping, all of a
sudden the man inside me rose in revolt. I felt such poverty as mine
to be unendurable, and that I was a slave, a spiritless fool, to put
up with it.
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