“Mossgray,” said Walter, “have you any message for your friend Hew Murray? Maxwell is going to follow his example, do you know.”
“How?” I asked.
“Oh, that famous appointment we have heard so much of has come at last,” said Edward. “The —— regiment are to have the benefit of my learned services, and they are lying at some heathenish place not far from Hew’s head-quarters. The name I have learned to write after a day’s practice—but the pronunciation—come now, Walter, be merciful—don’t make me desperate by forcing these dislocated syllables over my lips—at least not in Miss Johnstone’s presence.”
“Oh, never mind Miss Johnstone—Lilie is not such an epicure in sounds,” said Walter. “Come along, Mixy. After all, man, I believe you don’t know the true secret so well as I do. A professed lady’s man should never be ladylike himself. What do you say, Mossgray? Do you hear me, Charlie—am I not right?”
Mixy was our familiar contraction of Edward’s respectable surname—we were rather proud of our ingenuity in manufacturing a diminutive which suited name and profession alike so well; and he took it with wonderful good humour. To-night however he seemed displeased a little. I did not wonder; for who could endure to be exposed to ridicule in the presence of Lilias?
“You’re right in the abstract, Wat,” answered Charlie, with perfect coolness: “but wrong in this particular instance. To think of giving counsel to Mixy in such matters—why, Mixy’s irresistible!”
Edward coloured and laughed.
“There now, Charlie, that will do. Don’t believe them, I beg, Miss Johnstone; it’s mere malice, I assure you.”
“Take care, Lilie,” said Walter, “he wants to put you off your guard. Ask Mossgray, if you don’t believe me.”
I coloured more deeply than Edward—this was carrying the joke too far—that Lilias, in her unapproachable purity and loftiness, should be so addressed was a kind of sacrilege. I started in jealous eagerness to save her name from the careless badinage which was profanity to me.