Explore "The Colonel's Boy" by Stanley J. Weyman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A stranger, coming upon the Colonel as he sat in the morning-room of the club and read his newspaper with an angelic smile, would have sought for another copy of the paper and searched its columns with pleasant anticipations. But I knew better. I knew that the Colonel, though he had put on his glasses and was pretending to cull the news, was only doing what I believe he did after lunch and after dinner, and after he got into bed, and at every one of those periods when the old campaigner, with a care for his digestion and his conscience, selects some soothing matter for meditation. He was thinking of his boy; and I went up to him and smacked him on the shoulder. "Well, Colonel," I said, "how is Jim?"
"Hallo! Why, it's Jolly Joe Bratton! " he replied, dropping his glasses, and gripping my hand tightly -- for we did not ride and tie at Inkerman for nothing. "The very man I wanted to see."