Catamount's first act of insubordination, indeed, was to run away with his new master for four miles on end, across the Curragh, but over excellent turf, smooth as a bowling-green: he discovered, to his surprise, that Bill wished no better fun. He then repeated the experiment in a stiffly-fenced part of Kildare; and here found himself not only indulged, but instigated to continue, when he wanted to leave off. He tried grinding his rider's leg against the wall: Bill turned a sharp spur inwards, and made it very uncomfortable. He lay down: Bill kept him on the ground an hour or two by sitting on his head.
At last he confined himself to kicking unreasonably, at intervals, galloping sullenly on, nevertheless, in the required direction, and doing a vast amount of work in an incredibly short space of time. He was never off his feed, and his legs never filled, so to Bill he was invaluable, notwithstanding their disputes, and a certain soreness about a Cup the horse ought to have won, had he not sulked at the finish: they loved each other dearly, and would have been exceedingly loth to part.
"My serjeant's wife will get you some dinner," said the rider, between certain sundry preliminary kicks in getting under way. "She's an outside cook, and I've told her what you'd like. There's a bottle of brandy on the chimney-piece, and soda-water in the drawer next the badger. I'll be back before it's time for you to start. Cut along, Catamount! Hang it! don't get me off the shop-board, before half the troop. Forrard! my lad! Forrard! away!" and Bill galloped out of the barracks at head-long speed, much to the gratification of the sentry manipulating his carbine at the gate. This true friend proved as good as his word. In less than three hours, he was back again, Catamount having hardly turned a hair in their excursion. The colonel had been kindness itself. The leave was all right. There was nothing more to be done, but to pack Daisy off in a Hansom, for Euston Square.
"Take a pony, old man," said Bill, urging his friend to share his purse, while he wished him "good-bye." "If I'd more, you should have it. Nonsense! I don't want it a bit. Keep your pecker up and fight high. Write a line if anything turns up. I'll go on working the job here, never fear. We won't let you out of the regiment. What is life, after all, to a fellow who isn't a light dragoon?"
DELILAH
In consoling his friend, Xanthias Phoceus, for the result of a little flirtation, in which that Roman gentleman seems to have indulged without regard to station, Horace quotes for us a triad of illustrious persons whose brazen-plated armour, and bulls-hide targets were of no avail to fence them from the shaft of love. If neither petulant Achilles, nor Ajax, son of Telamon, nor the king of men himself, could escape, it is not to be supposed that a young cavalry officer in her Majesty's service, however simple in his habits and frank in his demeanour, should be without some weakness of the same nature, unacknowledged perhaps, yet none the less a weakness on that account.
"Soldier Bill," notwithstanding his kindly disposition and fresh comely face, seemed the last man in the world to be susceptible of female influence, yet "Soldier Bill" felt, to a certain extent, in the same plight as Agamemnon. Though in dress, manners and appearance, anything but what is usually termed a "ladies' man;" he was nevertheless a prime favourite with the sex, on such rare occasions as threw him in their way. Women in general seem most to appreciate qualities not possessed by themselves, and while they greatly admire all kinds of courage, find that which is mingled with good-humoured haphazard recklessness, perfectly irresistible. They worship their heroes too, and believe in them, with ludicrous good faith. Observe a woman in a pleasure boat. If there comes a puff of wind, she never takes her eyes off the boatman, and trusts him implicitly. The more frightened she feels, the more confidence she places in her guardian, and so long as the fancied danger lasts, clings devotedly to the pilot, be he the roughest, hairiest, tarriest son of Neptune that ever turned a quid.