“Have I not been withered by your scorn!”
“I—I—” Rachel was going to say something of her change of opinion with regard to military society, but a sudden consciousness set her cheeks in a flame and checked her tongue; while Bessie Keith, with ease and readiness, filled up the blank.
“What, Alick, you have brought the service into disrepute! I am ashamed of you!”
“Oh, no!” said Rachel, in spite of her intolerable blushes, feeling the necessity of delivering her confession, like a cannon-ball among skirmishers; “only we had been used to regard officers as necessarily empty and frivolous, and our recent experience has—has been otherwise.” Her period altogether failed her.
“There, Alick, is that the effect of your weight of wisdom? I shall be more impressed with it than ever. It has redeemed the character of your profession. Captain Keith and the army.”
“I am afraid I cannot flatter myself,” said Alick; and a sort of reflection of Rachel’s burning colour seemed to have lighted on his cheek, “its reputation has been in better hands.”
“O Colonel Colin! Depend upon it, he is not half as sage as you, Alick. Why, he is a dozen years older!—What, don’t you know, Miss Curtis, that the older people grow the less sage they get?”
“I hope not,” said Rachel.
“Do you! A contrary persuasion sustains me when I see people obnoxiously sage to their fellow-creatures.”
“Obnoxious sageness in youth is the token that there is stuff behind,” said Alick, with eagerness that set his sister laughing at him for fitting on the cap; but Rachel had a sort of odd dreamy perception that Bessie Keith had unconsciously described her (Rachel’s) own aspect, and that Alick was defending her, and she was silent and confused, and rather surprised at the assumption of the character by one who she thought could never even exert himself to be obnoxious. He evidently did not wish to dwell on the subject, but began to inquire after Avonmouth matters, and Rachel in return asked for Mr. Clare.