CHAPTER I.
PRISSY, HUGH JOHN, AND SIR TOADY LION

IT is always difficult to be great, but it is specially difficult when greatness is thrust upon one, as it were, along with the additional burden of a distinguished historical name. This was the case with General Napoleon Smith. Yet when this story opens he was not a general. That came later, along with the cares of empire and the management of great campaigns.

But already in secret he was Napoleon Smith, though his nurse sometimes still referred to him as Johnnie, and his father – but stay. I will reveal to you the secret of our soldier's life right at the start. Though a Napoleon, our hero was no Buonaparte. No, his name was Smith – plain Smith; his father was the owner of four large farms and a good many smaller ones, near that celebrated Border which separates the two hostile countries of England and Scotland. Neighbours referred to the General's father easily as "Picton Smith of Windy Standard," from the soughing, mist-nursing mountain of heather and fir-trees which gave its name to the estate, and to the large farm he had cultivated himself ever since the death of his wife, chiefly as a means of distracting his mind, and keeping at a distance loneliness and sad thoughts.

Hugh John Smith had never mentioned the fact of his Imperial descent to his father, but in a moment of confidence he had told his old nurse, who smiled with a world-weary wisdom, which betrayed her knowledge of the secrets of courts – and said that doubtless it was so. He had also a brother and sister, but they were not, at that time, of the race of the Corporal of Ajaccio. On the contrary, Arthur George, the younger, aged five, was an engine-driver. There was yet another who rode in a mail-cart, and puckered up his face upon being addressed in a strange foreign language, as "Was-it-then? A darling – goo-goo – then it was!" This creature, however, was not owned as a brother by Hugh John and Arthur George, and indeed may at this point be dismissed from the story. The former went so far as stoutly to deny his brother's sex, in the face of such proofs as were daily afforded by Baby's tendency to slap his sister's face wherever they met, and also to seize things and throw them on the floor for the pleasure of seeing them break. Arthur George, however, had secret hopes that Baby would even yet turn out a satisfactory boy whenever he saw him killing flies on the window, and on these occasions hounded him on to yet deadlier exertions. But he dared not mention his anticipations to his soldier brother, that haughty scion of an Imperial race. For reasons afterwards to be given, Arthur George was usually known as Toady Lion.

Then Hugh John had a sister. Her name was Priscilla. Priscilla was distinguished also, though not in a military sense. She was literary, and wrote books "on the sly," as Hugh John said. He considered this secrecy the only respectable part of a very shady business. Specially he objected to being made to serve as the hero of Priscilla's tales, and went so far as to promise to "thump" his sister if he caught her introducing him as of any military rank under that of either general or colour-sergeant.

"Look here, Pris," he said on one occasion, "if you put me into your beastly girl books all about dolls and love and trumpery, I'll bat you over the head with a wicket!"

"Hum – I dare say, if you could catch me," said Priscilla, with her nose very much in the air.

"Catch you! I'll catch and bat you now if you say much."

"Much, much! Can't, can't! There! 'Fraid cat! Um-m-um!"

"By Jove, then, I just will!"

It is sad to be obliged to state here, in the very beginning of these veracious chronicles, that at this time Prissy and Napoleon Smith were by no means model children, though Prissy afterwards marvellously improved. Even their best friends admitted as much, and as for their enemies – well, their old gardener's remarks when they chased each other over his newly planted beds would be out of place even in a military periodical, and might be the means of preventing a book with Mr. Gordon Browne's nice pictures from being included in some well-conducted Sunday-school libraries.

General Napoleon Smith could not catch Priscilla (as, indeed, he well knew before he started), especially when she picked up her skirts and went right at hedges and ditches like a young colt. Napoleon looked upon this trait in Prissy's character as degrading and unsportsmanlike in the extreme. He regarded long skirts, streaming hair, and flapping, aggravating pinafores as the natural handicap of girls in the race of life, and as particularly useful when they "cheeked" their brothers. It was therefore wicked to neutralise these equalising disadvantages by strings tied round above the knees, or by the still more scientific device of a sash suspended from the belt before, passed between Prissy's legs, and attached to the belt behind.

But, then, as Napoleon admitted even at ten years of age, girls are capable of anything; and to his dying day he has never had any reason to change his opinion – at least, so far as he has yet got.

"All right, then, I will listen to your old stuff if you will say you are sorry, and promise to be my horse, and let me lick you for an hour afterwards – besides giving me a penny."

It was thus that Priscilla, to whom in after times great lights of criticism listened with approval, was compelled to stoop to artifice and bribery in order to secure and hold her first audience. Whereupon the authoress took paper from her pocket, and as she did so, held the manuscript with its back to Napoleon Smith, in order to conceal the suspicious shortness of the lines. But that great soldier instantly detected the subterfuge.

"It's a penny more for listening to poetry!" he said, with sudden alacrity.

"I know it is," replied Prissy sadly, "but you might be nice about it just this once. I'm dreadfully, dreadfully poor this week, Hugh John!"

"So am I," retorted Napoleon Smith sternly; "if I wasn't, do you think I would listen at all to your beastly old poetry? Drive on!"

Thus encouraged, Priscilla meekly began —

 
"My love he is a soldier bold,
And my love is a knight;
He girds him in a coat of mail,
When he goes forth to fight."
 

"That's not quite so bad as usual," said Napoleon condescendingly, toying meanwhile with the lash of an old dog-whip he had just "boned" out of the harness-room. Priscilla beamed gratefully upon her critic, and proceeded —

 
"He rides him forth across the sand— "
 

"Who rides whom?" cried Napoleon. "Didn't the fool ride a horse?"

"It means himself," said Priscilla meekly.

"Then why doesn't it say so?" cried the critic triumphantly, tapping his boot with the "boned" dog-whip just like any ordinary lord of creation in presence of his inferiors.

"It's poetry," explained Priscilla timidly.

"It's silly!" retorted Napoleon, judicially and finally.

Priscilla resumed her reading in a lower and more hurried tone. She knew that she was skating over thin ice.

 
"He rides him forth across the sand,
Upon a stealthy steed."
 

"You mean 'stately,' you know," interrupted Napoleon – somewhat rudely, Priscilla thought. Yet he was quite within his rights, for Priscilla had not yet learned that a critic always knows what you mean to say much better than you do yourself.

"No, I don't mean 'stately,'" said Priscilla, "I mean 'stealthy,' the way a horse goes on sand. You go and gallop on the sea-shore and you'll find out."

I've listened quite a pennyworth now."

 
"He rides him forth across the sand,
Upon a stealthy steed,
And when he sails upon the sea,
He plays upon a reed!"
 

"Great soft he was," cried Napoleon Smith; "and if ever I hear you say that I did such a thing – "

Priscilla hurried on more quickly than ever.

 
"In all the world there's none can do
The deeds that he hath done:
When he hath slain his enemies,
Then he comes back alone."
 

"That's better!" said Napoleon, nodding encouragement. "At any rate it isn't long. Now, give me my penny."

"Shan't," said Priscilla, the pride of successful achievement swelling in her breast; "besides, it isn't Saturday yet, and you've only listened to three verses anyway. You will have to listen to ever so much more than that before you get a penny."

"Hugh John! Priscilla!" came a voice from a distance.

The great soldier Napoleon Smith instantly effected a retreat in masterly fashion behind a gooseberry bush.

"There's Jane calling us," said Priscilla; "she wants us to go in and be washed for dinner."

"Course she does," sneered Napoleon; "think she's out screeching like that for fun? Well, let her. I am not going in to be towelled till I'm all over red and scurfy, and get no end of soap in my eyes."

"But Jane wants you; she'll be so cross if you don't come."

"I don't care for Jane," said Napoleon Smith with dignity, but all the same making himself as small as possible behind his gooseberry bush.

"But if you don't come in, Jane will tell father – "

"I don't care for father – " the prone but gallant General was proceeding to declare in the face of Priscilla's horrified protestations that he mustn't speak so, when a slow heavy step was heard on the other side of the hedge, and a deep voice uttered the single syllable, "John!"

"Yes, father," a meek young man standing up behind the gooseberry bush instantly replied: he was trying to brush himself as clean as circumstances would permit. "Yes, father; were you calling me, father?"

Incredible as it seems, the meek and apologetic words were those of that bold enemy of tyrants, General Napoleon Smith.

Priscilla smiled at the General as he emerged from the hands of Jane, "red and scurfy," just as he had said. She smiled meaningly and aggravatingly, so that Napoleon was reduced to shaking his clenched fist covertly at her.

"Wait till I get you out," he said, using the phrase time-honoured by such occasions.

Priscilla Smith only smiled more meaningly still. "First catch your hare!" she said under her breath.

Napoleon Smith stalked in to lunch, the children's dinner at the house of Windy Standard, with an expression of fixed and Byronic gloom on his face, which was only lightened by the sight of his favourite pigeon-pie (with a lovely crust) standing on the side-board.

"Say grace, Hugh John," commanded his father.

And General Napoleon Smith said grace with all the sweet innocence of a budding angel singing in the cherub choir, aiming at the same time a kick at his sister underneath the table, which overturned a footstool and damaged the leg of a chair.