“Oh, I say, you are hard on a man, Glen! ’Pon my soul, you are;” and the handsome little fellow looked, with his flushed cheeks and white skin, more girlish than ever.
“Hard? Nonsense! I don’t want to see you grow into a puppy. I must give you a lesson now and then, or you’ll be spoiled; and then how am I to face Lady Millet after promising what I did?”
“Oh, I had a letter from mamma this morning,” said the lad; “she sent her kindest regards to you.”
“Thank her for them,” said the young officer. “Well, so the party went off all right, Dick?”
“Splendid! You ought to have been there. Gertrude would have been delighted to see you.”
“Humph! Out of place, my boy. Lady Millet wants a rich husband for your sister. I’m the wrong colour.”
“Not you. I don’t want Gerty to have someone she does not like.”
“But I thought you said that there was a Mr Huish, or some such name?”
“Well, yes, there is; but it may not come off. Mamma hates the Huishes.”
“You’re a character, Dick!” said the officer laughingly. “There, I’m going to make you dissipated to get you square, so light your cigar, my lad; I won’t bully you any more,” he continued, smiling good-humouredly, “and you may shave till your beard comes if you like, and wax your—your eyebrows—I mean moustache, and dandify yourself a little, for I like to see you smart; but an you love me, as the poet says, no more of that confounded lisp. Now then, you’ve been reconnoitring, have you, and spying out the barrenness of the land?”