“I will tell you a secret. I mean to go, though I am under strict orders not to go. What do I care for the weather? Tush, I have settled it all very cleverly. You will see me there, when you least expect it. Lallie has behaved very badly to me; so has everybody else about it. Am I never to be told anything? She seems to be in a great hurry about it. Desperately in love, no doubt, though from what I remember of Stephen Chapman I am a little surprised at her taste—but of course——”
“Of course, of course, one must never say a word about young ladies’ fancies. There was a young lady in Spain—to be sure there are a great many young ladies in Spain——”
The Colonel dropped the subject in the clumsiest manner possible. He was under medical orders not to say a word that might stir up Hilary; and yet from the time he came into the room he had done nothing else but stir him up. Colonel Clumps was about the last man in the world that ought to stump in at any sick man’s door. “Dash it, there I am again!” he used to say, as he began to let out something, and stopped short, and jammed his lips up, and set his wooden apparatus down. Therefore he had not been allowed to pay many visits to Hilary, otherwise the latter must soon have discovered the nature of the arrangement pending to retrieve his fortunes. At present he thought that the money was to be raised by a simple mortgage, of which he vowed, in his sanguine manner, that he would soon relieve the estates, by getting an appointment in India, as soon as he had captured Paris. Mabel of course would go with him, and be a great lady, and make his curries. He was never tired of this idea, and was talking of it to Colonel Clumps, who had seen some Indian service, when a gentle knock at the door was heard, and a soft voice said, “May I come in?” As Alice entered, the battered warrior arose and made a most ingenious bow, quite of his own invention. Necessity is the mother of that useful being; and the Colonel having no leg to stand upon, and only one arm to balance with, was in a position of extreme necessity. Of late he had almost begun to repent of serving under Lady Valeria; the beauty and calm resignation of Alice had made their way into his brave old heart; and the more he saw of Captain Chapman, the more he looked down on that feather-bed soldier.
“Good-bye, my lad. Keep your pecker up,” he said, beginning with his thick bamboo to beat a retreat; for Hilary was not allowed two visitors; “we’ll march into Paris yet, brave boys; with Colonel Clumps at the head of the column. Don’t be misled by appearances, Alice; the Colonel has good work in him yet. His sword is only gone to be sharpened, ma’am; and then he’ll throw away this d——d bamboo.”
In his spirited flourish, the Colonel slipped, and not yet being master of his wooden leg, and down he must have come, without the young lady’s arm, as well as the aid of the slighted staff. Alice, in spite of all her misery, could not help a little laugh, as the Colonel, recovering his balance, strutted carefully down the passage.
“What a merry girl you are!” cried Hilary, who was a little vexed at having his martial counsel routed. “You seem to me to be always laughing when there is nothing to laugh at.”
“That shows a low sense of humour,” she answered, “or else an excess of high spirits. Perhaps in my case, the two combine. But I am sorry if I disturbed you.”
“I am not quite so easily disturbed. I am as well as I ever was. It is enough to make one ill, to be coddled up in this kind of way.”
“My dear brother, you are to be released as soon as the weather changes. At present nobody ventures out who is not going to be married.”
“Of that I can judge from the window, Lallie: and even from my water-jugs. But how is your very grand wedding to be? I have seen a score of men shovelling. You seem to be in such a hurry, dear.”