"The French are in great strength there, and hard knocks will be going," added Monkton. "Many among us are fated perhaps to find a last abode among the swamps of Beveland; so, if you escape, Kennedy, you must certainly gain your pair of colours, with five shillings and threepence per diem—less the income-tax—to spend on the luxuries of life—damme!"
"Glad to hear we are to be off so soon, Monkton," said a smart, but somewhat blasé-looking young lieutenant, "for we have a most weary time of it here in Colchester. The course of drill—drill, always drill—with club, sword, or musket, and the whole routine of barrack duty, with inspections and guards, are decidedly a bore!"
"What the deuce would you have, Colville?" asked the adjutant, bluntly. "What did you come here for?"
"I came to be a soldier," replied the "used up" sub, with a suave smile.
"To be a soldier?"
"Yes—not to doze life away by marching to and fro at the goose-step, in that gravelled yard, or by lolling over the window in shirt-sleeves, to save my shell-jacket. Where are all the castles I built——"
"To storm, eh?" asked Buckle, glancing uneasily at the commanding officer, who was forming his walnut-shells in grand-division squares, for the edification of the second major.
"Yes—I had hoped to have achieved something decidedly brilliant ere this."
"Console yourself, Colville, and pass the port. Ah, you consider yourself sharp—up to every sort of thing—a common delusion with young fellows of your age; but ten years' more soldiering, and the rubs of life between your twenties and thirties, to say nothing of those afterwards, will cure you of thinking so. Believe me, Colville, wherever we go, we shall find plenty of desperate work cut out for us all. Well, Monkton, in recruiting, you could not pick up an heiress—eh?"
"No. Heiresses are not to be found under every hedge."