"Sherry."
They filled their glasses, bowed, and drank, after which Quentin came forward and joined them.
"I'm Dick Warriston, 94th. My friends, Mr. Monkton and Mr. Boyle, 25th."
"Mr. Kennedy," said Quentin, introducing himself, with a heightened colour.
Quentin soon learned from their conversation that the captain had been recruiting for the 94th, and the other two officers for the 25th, in Ayrshire, with considerable success; that they had obtained a sufficient number of men, and were under orders to march for the head-quarters of their respective corps by daybreak on the morrow. He also heard, incidentally, some of the little secrets of recruiting, and the tricks played by knowing sergeants to trepan men into paying smart-money, and so forth; that the lieutenant had been "rowed" with a threat of being summoned to head-quarters for enlisting men beneath the proper height, his sergeant having supplied them with false heels, five feet seven being the minimum for "the Borderers;" and next, that he had narrowly escaped a court-martial for sending some half-dozen O'Neils and O'Donnels (all Irish) to the regiment, as MacNeils and MacDonnels from the Western Isles.
The three officers, in their jollity, thoughtlessness, laughter, and general lightness of heart, formed a strong contrast to poor Quentin's dejection of spirit. He envied them, and asked of himself why was he not happy and merry too—why was he not one of them?
Richard Warriston, the senior, had begun life as a subaltern in General Sir Ralph Dundas's Regiment of the Scots-Dutch, as they were named—the famous old Scots brigade of six battalions, which served their High Mightinesses the States of Holland from the days of James VI. to those of the French Revolution—in all the bloody wars of two centuries, bearing themselves with honour and never losing a standard, though they had captured many from every army in Europe. They volunteered, as the 94th Foot, into the British service about the end of the last century, and came back to Scotland clad in the old Dutch yellow uniform; hence Warriston's stories and memories were all of Holland and Flanders, Prussia and Austria, and many a strange anecdote he had to tell at times.
Desirous of showing the suspicious landlord and impertinent waiter how other persons viewed him, Quentin ordered another bottle of wine.
"The deuce!" he heard the captain whisper to Monkton; "we can't permit this mere boy to treat us to wine."
"Two bottles, and be sharp, waiter," said Quentin, whose pride the well-meaning officer had piqued.