"Veway much so," replied Roper, reconnoitring me calmly through his eyeglass. "A veway handsome turn-out indeed. 'Pon my honour, I had no idea they got up things so cleverly in the fencibles"----
"Yeomanry, if you please, Lieutenant Roper!"
"Ah, yes! Yeomanry--so it is. I say, M'Whirter, 'pon my soul, do you know, you look quite killing! Do, like a good fellow, just march to the corner of the room, and let us have a look at you on the other side."
"Oh do, Mr M'Whirter!" supplicated, or rather supplemented Edith.
"You'll excuse me, Roper, for not going through drill just now. If you like to come to the review, you shall see how our regiment can behave. At any rate, we shall be happy to see you at mess."
"Oh suttingly, suttingly! Veway good things those yeomanry messes. Always a deal of claret, I believe."
"And pray, Mr M'Whirter, what rank do you hold in that distinguished corps?" asked Edith.
"Goodness gracious!--then you're not even an officer!"
"A private of the yeomanry, Miss Bogle, is, let me inform you, totally independent of rank. We enrol ourselves for patriotism, not for pay. We are as honourable a body as the Archers of the Scots Guard, the Cavaliers of Dundee, or the Mousquetaires"----
"How romantic and nice! I declare, you are quite a D'Artagnan!" said Edith, who had just read the _Trois Mousquetaires_.
"Don't they pay you?" said Roper. "'Pon my honour that's too bad. If I were you I'd memorialise the Horse Guards. By the way, M'Whirter, what sort of a charger have you got?"
"Why, to say the truth," replied I, hesitatingly, "I am not furnished with a horse as yet. I am just going to look out for one at some of the livery stables."
"My dear friend," said Roper, with augmented interest, "I strongly recommend you to do nothing of the kind. These fellows will, to a dead certainty, sell you some sort of a brute that is either touched in the wind or dead lame; and I can tell you it is no joke to be spilt in a charge of cavalry."
I felt a sort of sickening sensation as I recalled the lines of Schiller--
"Young Piccolomini, known by his plume And his long hair, gave signal for the trenches; Himself leapt first, the regiment all plunged after. His charger, by a halbert gored, reared up, Flung him with violence off, and over him The horses, now no longer to be curbed"----