“Oh, when we're by ourselves,” the kindly little old hostess explained to him, “my daughter and I breakfast always at nine. That was our hour yesterday morning, for example. But when my son is here, then it's farewell to regularity. We put breakfast back till ten, then, as a kind of compromise between our own early habits and his lack of any sort of habits. Why we do it I couldn't say--because he never comes down in any event. He sleeps so well at Hadlow--and you know in town he sleeps very ill indeed--and so we don't dream of complaining. We're only too glad--for his sake.”
“And Balder,” commented the sister, “he's as bad the other way. He gets up at some unearthly hour, and has his tea and a sandwich from the still-room, and goes off with his rod or his gun or the dogs, and we never see him till luncheon.”
“I've been on the point of asking so many times,” Miss Madden interposed--“is Balder a family name, or is it after the Viking in Matthew Arnold's poem?”
“It was his father's choice,” Lady Plowden made answer. “I think the Viking explanation is the right one--it certainly isn't in either family. I can't say that it attracted me much--at first, you know.”
“Oh, but it fits him so splendidly,” said Lady Cressage. “He looks the part, as they say. I always thought it was the best of all the soldier names--and you have only to look at him to see that he was predestined for a soldier from his cradle.”
“I wish the Sandhurst people would have a good long look at him, then,” put in the mother with earnestness underlying the jest of her tone. “The poor boy will never pass those exams in the world. It IS ridiculous, as his father always said. If there ever was a man who was made for a soldier, it's Balder. He's a gentleman, and he's connected by tradition with the Army, and he's mad about everything military--and surely he's as clever as anybody else at everything except that wretched matter of books, and even there it's only a defect of memory--and yet that suffices to prevent his serving his Queen. And all over England there are young gentlemen like that--the very pick of the hunting-fields, strong and brave as lions, fit to lead men anywhere, the very men England wants to have fighting her battles--and they can't get places in the Army because--what was it Balder came to grief over last time?--because they can't remember whether it's Ispahan or Teheran that's the capital of Persia.