‘I’d have given twenty pounds if they’d have carried off yourself as the rebel!’ said the old man, shaking with laughter. ‘But there’s the soup on the table. Take my niece, Mr. Walpole; Gorman, give your arm to my daughter. Dick and I will bring up the rear.’
CHAPTER XLII
AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM
The fatalism of youth, unlike that of age, is all rose-coloured. That which is coming, and is decreed to come, cannot be very disagreeable. This is the theory of the young, and differs terribly from the experiences of after-life. Gorman O’Shea had gone to dinner with about as heavy a misfortune as could well befall him, so far as his future in life was concerned. All he looked forward to and hoped for was lost to him: the aunt who, for so many years, had stood to him in place of all family, had suddenly thrown him off, and declared that she would see him no more; the allowance she had hitherto given him withdrawn, it was impossible he could continue to hold his place in his regiment. Should he determine not to return, it was desertion—should he go back, it must be to declare that he was a ruined man, and could only serve in the ranks. These were the thoughts he revolved while he dressed for dinner, and dressed, let it be owned, with peculiar care; but when the task had been accomplished, and he descended to the drawing-room, such was the elasticity of his young temperament, every thought of coming evil was merged in the sense of present enjoyment, and the merry laughter which he overheard as he opened the door, obliterated all notion that life had anything before him except what was agreeable and pleasant.
‘We want to know if you play croquet, Mr. O’Shea?’ said Nina as he entered. ‘And we want also to know, are you a captain, or a Rittmeister, or a major? You can scarcely be a colonel.’
‘Your last guess I answer first. I am only a lieutenant, and even that very lately. As to croquet, if it be not your foreign mode of pronouncing cricket, I never even saw it.’
‘It is not my foreign mode of pronouncing cricket, Herr Lieutenant,’ said she pertly, ‘but I guessed already you had never heard of it.’
‘It is an out-of-door affair,’ said Dick indolently, ‘made for the diffusion of worked petticoats and Balmoral boots.’
‘I should say it is the game of billiards brought down to universal suffrage and the million,’ lisped out Walpole.