"My darling Biddy!"—"My dear Terence!" and the usual preliminaries were got over. I looked at my old flame—she was greatly changed, and three years had wrought a marvellous alteration. I left her a sprightly girl—she was now a woman—and decidedly a very pretty one; although the rosiness of seventeen was gone, and a delicacy that almost indicated bad health had succeeded; "but," thought I, "it's all owing to the cold."
There was a guarded propriety in Biddy's bearing, that appeared almost unnatural. The warm advances of old friendship were repressed; and one who had mounted a flower-pot to kiss me across a hedge, recoiled from any exhibition of our former tenderness. Well, it was all as it should be. Then I was a boy, and now a man. Young women cannot be too particular, and Biddy MacGawly rose higher in my estimation.
Biddy was stouter than she promised to be, when we parted, but the eye was as dark and lustrous, and the ankle as taper as when it last had demolished a geranium. Gradually her reserve abated; old feelings removed a constrained formality—we laughed and talked—ay—and kissed as we had done formerly; and when the old quartermaster's latch-key was heard unclosing the street-door, I found myself admitting in confidence and a whisper, that "I would marry if I could." What reply Biddy would have returned, I cannot tell, for Roger summoned me to the parlour; and as her cold prevented her from venturing down, she bade me an affectionate good-night. Of course she kissed me at parting—and it was done as ardently and innocently as if the hawthorn hedge divided us.
Roger had left his companions earlier than he usually did, in order to honour me, his guest. The new butler paraded oysters, and down we sat tête-à-tête. When supper was removed, and each had fabricated a red-hot tumbler from the tea-kettle, the quartermaster stretched his long legs across the hearth-rug, and with great apparent solicitude inquired into all that had befallen me since I had assumed the shoulder-knot and taken to the trade of war.
"Humph!"—he observed—"two steps in three years; not bad considering there was neither money nor interest. D—it! I often wish that Biddy was a boy. Never was such a time to purchase on. More regiments to be raised, and promotion will be at a discount. Sir Hugh Haughton married a stockbroker's widow with half a plum, and paid in the two thousand I had lent him. Zounds! if Biddy were a boy, and that money well applied, I would have her a regiment in a twelvemonth."
"Phew!" I thought to myself. "I see what the old fellow is driving at."
"There never would be such another opportunity," Roger continued. "An increased force will produce an increased difficulty in effecting it. Men will be worth their own weight in money; and d— me, a fellow who could raise a few, might have any thing he asked for."
I remarked that, with some influence and a good round sum, recruits might still be found.
"Ay, easy enough, and not much money either, if one knew how to go about the thing. Get two or three smart chaps; let them watch fairs and patterns, mind their hits when the bumpkins got drunk, and find out when fellows were hiding from a warrant. D—me, I would raise a hundred, while you would say Jack Robinson. Pay a friendly magistrate; attest the scoundrels before they were sober enough to cry off, bundle them to the regiment next morning; and if a rascal ran away after the commanding officer passed a receipt for him, why all the better, for you could relist him when he came home again."
I listened attentively, though in all this the cloven foot appeared. The whole was the plan of a crimp; and, if Roger was not belied, trafficking in "food for powder," had realized more of his wealth than slop-shoes and short measure.