GENERAL GRENVILLE’S REGIMENT AT DRILL.
Oct. 9.—I go on now pretty well; and I am so much acquainted with my party, that when no strangers are added, I begin to mind nothing but the first entree of my male visitants. My royal mistress is all sweetness to me; Miss Planta is most kind and friendly; General Budé is ever the same, and ever what I do not wish to alter; Colonel Goldsworthy seems coming round to good-humour; and even General Grenville begins to grow sociable. He has quitted the corner into which he used to cast his long figure, merely to yawn and lounge; and though yawn and lounge he does still, and must, I believe, to the end of the chapter, he yet does it in society, and mixes between it loud sudden laughter at what is occasionally said, and even here and there a question relative to what is going forward. Nay-yesterday he even seated himself at the tea table, and amused himself by playing with my work-box, and making sundry inquiries about its contents.
Oct. 10.—This evening, most unwittingly, I put my new neighbour’s good-humour somewhat to the test. He asked me whether I had walked out in the morning? Yes, I answered, I always walked. “And in the Little park?” cried he. Yes, I said, and to Old Windsor, and round the park wall, and along the banks of the Thames, and almost to Beaumont Lodge, and in the avenue of the Great park, and in short, in all the vicinage of Windsor. “But in the Little park?” he cried.
Still I did not understand him, but plainly answered, “Yes, this morning; and indeed many mornings.”
“But did you see nothing—remark nothing there?”
“No, not that I recollect, except some soldiers drilling.” You never heard such a laugh as now broke forth from all for, alas for my poor eyes, there had been in the Little park General Grenville’s whole regiment, with all his officers, and himself at their head! Fortunately it is reckoned one of the finest in the king’s service: this I mentioned, adding that else I could never again appear before him.
He affected to be vehemently affronted, but hardly knew how, even in joke, to appear so; and all the rest helped the matter on, by saying that they should know now how to distinguish his regiment, which henceforth must always be called “the drill.”
The truth is, as soon as I perceived a few red-coats I had turned another way, to avoid being marched at, and therefore their number and splendour had all been thrown away upon me.