"Are the bringers-up still dressed from the right flank by a flam on the drum? Does the colonel still use a speaking-trumpet? Is the point of war beaten now in honour of every new commission? Are the sergeants' pikes still stretchers for the wounded? Are pigtails always dressed straight by the back seam of the coat, and—but Lord! Lord! what am I asking? I clean forgot that the service is going to the devil, for the order that abolished the queues will be the ruin of it, from the Horse Guards to the Hottentot battalions! I can't fancy the 25th, like the Manx cats, with their tails cut off! In my time there would have been open mutiny if the atrocity had been attempted.
"Even the hair-powder is passing out of fashion now, unless a colonel happens to be powdered by time. Gentlemanly spirit will pass away too, I fear me, and the cautious time will come when a man will think twice before accepting an invitation to go out with a brother officer and breathe the morning air, about reveillez, at ten paces, with a pair of saw-handled pops.
"In Rohallion's time the 25th used to wear their hair and pigtails so floured and pomatumed that many a good meal the barrack rats have made off our caputs, when we lay asleep on the wood benches of the guard-house.
"And they (the Horse Guards, we presume) have substituted cloth pantaloons for the pipe-clayed breeches in which we fought at Minden and New York. This may be an improvement, for, in my time, our pipeclayed smalls were often a mass of mud on the march, and in wet weather one might as well have been in a bog of quick lime, for they regularly skinned us.
"And now, Quentin, my dear, dear laddie, to close an ower lang letter."
To Askerne, who came in at that moment, Quentin showed the letter of the worthy veteran, and it proved to the captain a source of some amusement, so quaint and old-fashioned were Girvan's ideas of the regiment and of the service.
"Well, Kennedy, what does Miss Flora's letter contain—eh?" asked Askerne, with a waggish smile.
"Don't jest, pray—I depend on your honour."
"You may, indeed, Quentin."
"It contained only this ring."