"Well, Robert, I have to congratulate you on your improved prospects. I heard of them only a few minutes ago. It's a big jump from a junior clerk in a merchant's office to a lieutenancy in a cavalry regiment."
"Oh, ah, yes—Armstrong told you!" the young gentleman replies, with affected nonchalance, to hide his inward perturbation. "Yes, we have been working the thing for some time; but I did not like to tell you anything about it until it was finally settled."
"I knew all along," says Pauline triumphantly. "Isn't it grand news, Addie? Fancy, his commission arrived this morning, and you have now the honor of addressing a full-blown lieutenant in the Royal Nutshire Fusiliers. Wouldn't you almost guess it by the extra vitality of his mustache?"
"Yes," simpers Robert, "I am now a member of that gallant corps; and a rare lot of fellows some of them are. You know most of them, Polly, don't you?"
"All those worth knowing, Bob. I had an invitation, you must know, to command the regiment last Thursday."
"No! Had you, though? Fancy old Freeman turning spooney at his time of life! Well, I never! You would have been his third wife, wouldn't you, Poll?"
"I should have started with two sons and a daughter older than myself," says Pauline.
"Well, I hope he'll let me off easily during the training, for your sake, my dear."
"When did you leave Mr. Armstrong's office?" asks Addie, in a chilly voice.
"Oh, I cut the shop nearly three weeks ago! Couldn't stand it any longer, you know. It is all very well for a man brought up to that sort of thing, with mercantile parents, et cætera, but with me it was different. Then the society I had to mix in, to rub against officially all day—very good fellows in their way, respectable and all that, but not—not the class I could stand. I saw that from the beginning, and Armstrong himself came to acknowledge it in the end. Clear-sighted fellow, your husband, Addie. He quite understood and sympathized with my inclination for soldiering—in fact, as I learned rather to my surprise, he had done a little in that line in his early days."