Captain La Touche, a stout dapper-looking man, his special friend, paused as he was about to light a cigarette, and exclaimed:
“Now then, young Holroyd, so you would go to Monaco!”
“Not I! I never went near the place. I lost the money in an investment, in—in short, in—in family—matters.”
“Well, I am truly sorry to hear it,” said his comrade, coming over and taking a seat beside him, “but you have three nags here and a good kit, and you can scrape along with very little besides your pay, as long”—and here he eyed him sharply—“as you don’t think of getting married.”
“I suppose you know that Jones of the other battalion is going to commit matrimony,” said George, by way of changing the conversation.
“Going to be married, is he?” growled a grizzled major, “and serves him right. The Lord be praised, that’s a folly of which I have never been guilty.”
“Nor I,” added Captain La Touche, who was a bachelor, and proud of his estate.
“Don’t shout till you are out of the wood,” returned George impressively.
“Why not?—I am practically out of the wood! There is no fear of me—why I’ve actually been in action with a would-be father-in-law, and came out scatheless.”
“How—you never confessed this before?”