She sat down at the piano, and Dudley seeing Rob weeding a flower bed
outside the open window, beckoned to him to come up closer and listen.
"It's the best song out," he shouted.
Roy's face shone as Miss Bertram's sweet voice rang out triumphantly.
--"'the fight was won, and the regiment saved
By those two little dots in red!'"
"Oh, how I wish I could be a soldier!" was the muttered exclamation of
Roy, "I shall never be able to serve the Queen now!"
"Nonsense," said Miss Bertram, briskly; "granny would tell you 'that all
the Bertrams have always served the Queen, and only a few of them have
been soldiers!'"
"Well, I suppose they have been sailors?" said Dudley.
"Not at all; we have only had one admiral, and three naval captains in
our family during the last hundred years. Your father, Dudley, served
the Queen as a governor in India quite as well as if he were fighting
for her. Roy's father was her servant in Canada, though he had to do
with politics; your uncle James served as a member of Parliament. The
Queen has numbers of servants. I always think policemen are quite as
brave as soldiers!"
"And what can a one-legged Bertram do?" Roy asked, with a pathetic smile
that went straight to his aunt's heart.
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