'Birkie—why?'
'Lost a pot of money on a hurdle-race at Streatham—it's a step in the regiment; but everyone is very, sorry for poor Birkie. Acharn has got into a scrape with a widow, whose husband suddenly turned up, so he has gone on leave, to be out of the way, and Freeport too.'
'Freeport—what was Dick up to?'
'He proposed to three sisters in one night—all the daughters of a commandant of one of those confounded brigade depots, and hearing that the adjutant might be sent for his sword, Dick was off like a bird by an early train for London. But we all know that Dick has an engagement-ring with a blue stone, which he gives to some girl everywhere, yet contrives to get back in a lover's quarrel when the route comes.'
To Fotheringhame it was apparent that his friend had come back to Dumbarton in a somewhat taciturn mood—cloudy in face and abstracted in manner.
'What the dickens has happened?' thought he.
'Was our colonel—the old general—kind?' he asked.
'Very,' was the curt reply.
'And the ladies—kinder still, I suppose?' hazarded Fotheringhame, lying back in his chair and shooting concentric rings of tobacco-smoke upward. 'No answer—eh? Now, apropos of the subject of your remarkable letter, I hope that you have left Eaglescraig without committing yourself?'
'I played no more with that fellow Hew.'