[xiv] [1] [1] Sir Toady Lion. 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. I 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[2] 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. [2] 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,
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