But let us have no nonsense talked.

What will the country come to if everyone who does his duty as it should be done expects to be called a hero, and I know not what besides?
The prince is safe, and the boy likewise.
Now off to bed with him, and no more nonsense to be talked in my hearing.
"God bless you, child! You'll live yet to be a credit to the name you bear." And Paul was made happier by that one word from his stern though loving sire than by all the praises he had heard lavished upon himself during the past hours.

For there was no one in the wide world that the child so reverenced as his dark-browed father, who seldom praised his children, and was inflexible in his punishments whenever they were deserved.

To be told by him that he had done his duty, and would be a credit to his house, was happiness far beyond his deserts, he thought; and he registered a mental vow, deep down in his brave little heart, that he would never in time to come give the world cause to say he had not lived up to the promise of his boyhood.
The loving sympathy with which his mother listened to his story, the caresses she showered upon him in thought of the deadly peril in which he had stood, and the hearty approbation of his brothers and the retainers and servants in his father's halls, were a small pleasure as compared with those few brief, almost stern, words from that father himself.

Even the notification that he was to present himself on the Monday before the king and queen added little to his happiness, although the idea of seeing once again his admired little prince could not but fill him with gratification.
His father led him to the royal presence, and bowed low on hearing himself thanked for having brought up sons who so well demonstrated the loyalty and devotion which had been born and bred in them.