“John,” whispered the surgeon, with awakened curiosity, “what means this festival?”
“That your wig and my black head would look the better for a little of Betty Flanagan’s flour; but it is too late now, and we must fight the battle armed as you see.”
“Observe, here comes the army chaplain in his full robes, as a Doctor
Divinitatis; what can it mean?”
“An exchange,” said the trooper. “The wounded of Cupid are to meet and settle their accounts with the god, in the way of plighting faith to suffer from his archery no more.”
The surgeon laid a finger on the side of his nose, and he began to comprehend the case.
“Is it not a crying shame, that a sunshine hero, and an enemy, should thus be suffered to steal away one of the fairest plants that grow in our soil,” muttered Lawton; “a flower fit to be placed in the bosom of any man!”
“If he be not more accommodating as a husband than as a patient, John, I fear me that the lady will lead a troubled life.”
“Let her,” said the trooper, indignantly; “she has chosen from her country’s enemies, and may she meet with a foreigner’s virtues in her choice.”
Further conversation was interrupted by Miss Peyton, who, advancing, acquainted them that they had been invited to grace the nuptials of her eldest niece and Colonel Wellmere. The gentlemen bowed; and the good aunt, with an inherent love of propriety, went on to add, that the acquaintance was of an old date, and the attachment by no means a sudden thing. To this Lawton merely bowed still more ceremoniously; but the surgeon, who loved to hold converse with the virgin, replied,—
“That the human mind was differently constituted in different individuals. In some, impressions are vivid and transitory; in others, more deep and lasting: indeed, there are some philosophers who pretend to trace a connection between the physical and mental powers of the animal; but, for my part, madam, I believe that the one is much influenced by habit and association, and the other subject altogether to the peculiar laws of matter.”