"Dooty is—dooty, your honour!"
"And you are a damned obstinate fellow, Zebedee, d'ye hear?"
The Sergeant saluted.
"I say a dolt and a preposterous fool to boot—d'ye take me, Zeb?"
The Sergeant saluted.
"And you talk pure folly—curst folly, d'ye understand, Zebedee?"
"Folly as ever was sir, but—folly for you, folly for me, says I!"
Now at this the Major grew so angry that he dropped a riding-boot and, stooping for it at the same instant as the Sergeant they knocked their hats off and were groping for these when there came a soft rapping at the door and, starting erect, they beheld Mrs. Agatha, smiling and bright-eyed and across one arm she bore—the Ramillie coat.
"Your honour," said she, curtseying, "'tis very late, I know, but I'm here to bring your old battle-coat as I found to-day in the garden, knowing 'tis such a favourite with you. Good-night, sir!" So Mrs. Agatha dimpled, curtseyed and sped softly away, surreptitiously beckoning to the Sergeant.
Left alone, the Major let fall his boots and sinking into a chair sat staring at the Ramillie coat, chin on breast; then he leaned forward to take it up but paused suddenly arrested by a fragrance very faint and elusive yet vaguely familiar; he sighed and sinking deeper into his chair became lost awhile in reverie. At last he roused himself and reaching the garment from where Mrs. Agatha had set it on the table, drew it upon his knees, made as if to feel in the pockets and paused again for now the fragrance seemed all about him, faint but ineffably sweet, a sweetness breathing of—Her. And, inhaling this fragrance, the glamour of her presence was about him, he had but to close his eyes and she was there before him in all her warm and vivid beauty, now smiling in bewitching allurement, now plaintive and tender, now quick-breathing, blushing, trembling to his embrace—even as he was trembling.