His Big Opportunity
Copyright© 2024 by Amy Le Feuvre
Chapter 12: Letters
Very disappointed were the boys at Rob’s first letter, which arrived about a fortnight after he had gone to the regimental depot at a neighboring town.
“DEAR MASTER ROY:
“I hope you and Master Dudley are
quite well as it leaves me at present. I like it
first-rate, but it is hard work, and I have a
good many masters, but I means to do my
best. God bless you.
“From your faithful
“ROB.”
“That’s not a letter at all!” said Roy, scornfully; “why he tells us nothing at all! Why he might have gone to school and told us more! That from a soldier. It’s the stupidest rot I’ve ever heard!”
“I think you forget what a poor scholar Rob is,” said Miss Bertram, reprovingly. “Now I think that is a remarkably good letter when I think what a short time he has been learning to write. You boys had better each write a proper letter to him yourselves, and ask him what you want to know. He will like to hear from you.”
And so that afternoon, sitting up in state at the library table, the boys spread out their writing materials and began to write.
“I feel,” said Roy, biting the end of his pen and looking up at the ceiling for an inspiration, “that I don’t know quite how to begin. I should like to tell him not to write like an ass, when he knows he ought to tell us everything.”
“All right, tell him so,” said Dudley, squaring his elbow and frowning terribly as he prepared himself for the task. “You know what old Selby says: ‘Make your paper talk, my boys, and make it talk in your own tongues.’”
After a great many interruptions from each other, and a few skirmishes round the table which resulted in the ink bottle being spilt, the letters were finished.
Roy read his aloud with pride to Dudley, who did the same to him.
“MY DEAR ROB:
“You must write us longer letters. I
am quite sure there is lots to tell. What do
you have to eat? And where do you sleep?
Have you got a gun of your own? Do they
let soldiers shoot rabbits on their half-holidays?
Does the band play while you are at dinner?
What are your clothes like, and what are you
to be called, now you’re a soldier? When
will you be a sergeant, and is there any fighting
coming off soon? Old Principle says
you will be learning drill. What is drill? He
says it’s learning how to march, but Dudley
and I can do that first-rate. How many masters
have you got? Write to me to-morrow
and tell me all. I hope you will remember
you are our soldier, and be sure you do something
very grand as quick as ever you can.
Have you got a sword and a medal? Do you
ride on a horse, and can you fire off the cannon?
I miss you very much but you belong
to us, and must come back full of glory.
“Your loving friend,
“FITZ ROY BERTRAM.”
“MY DEAR ROB:
“I hope you like being a soldier. How
many soldiers are there in the same house with
you? Give them my love and tell them we
hope they liked the cake we put in your box
for them. Roy came down to old Principle’s
with me yesterday. He showed us a hammer
out of his cave he dug up. He says you will
not be a full blown soldier for a year. He
had a cousin who was a sergeant in India—and
had his brains burst out in battle. When
do you begin to fight? Tell us if you feel
funky, and what the enemy looks like, and who
they are. We think you ought to write us a
much jollier letter. Roy’s leg is first-rate, and
he is up on the garden wall now like a cat.
We sit there to do our evening prep: for old
Selby. Good-bye. We’re on the lookout for
your name in the newspapers the first battle
that comes off.
“Roy’s friend,
“DUDLEY.”
“I don’t think you’ve finished your letter properly,” observed Roy, critically, as Dudley concluded reading his. “Why do you write you’re my friend?”
“Because I am,” was the prompt reply; “I’m not Rob’s friend and I shan’t tell him I am. I just write to him because you do, that’s all.”
“Don’t you like him?”
“I don’t want him for my friend; he’s going to be a kind of servant. Besides I wanted him to remember that I was your friend. I knew you long before he did, and if he was dead now, or if he never had been born, I should have been your friend just the same. We could have got on all right without him.”
This was not the first touch of jealousy that had appeared in Dudley’s character. He had more than once quarrelled with Roy on account of the boy who he said had crept in between them, but on Roy always emphatically assuring him that Rob occupied a back place in his affections, Dudley would generally be appeased and become his sunny self again.
“I like Rob very much,” said Roy, slowly, “‘specially now he’s a soldier. I was thinking in church last Sunday, when they were reading about David and Jonathan, that Jonathan had an armor-bearer. That’s Rob. Only I can’t go to battle, so I send him. Don’t you think that’s a nice idea?”
“Did he get killed?” asked Dudley, with interest; “I forget about him.”
“It doesn’t say—I expect he lived as long as Jonathan did, and then perhaps David took him to be his servant. That’s what I’ve settled with Rob, that he shall be your servant if I die.”
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