"She's going to see her husband! She's the wickedest woman in England," said Mr Clam, who caught the last sentence.
"Still here'" said a voice at his ear—"lurking about the barracks!"
He looked round and saw the irate features of the tremendous Mrs Sword. He made a rapid bolt and disappeared, as if he had a pulk of Cossacks in full chase at his heels.
The conversation of the good-natured Colonel Sword with Chatterton had opened that young hero's eye so entirely to the folly of his conduct, that it needed many encouraging speeches from his superior to keep him from sinking into despair.—"That I should have been such a fool," he said, "as to think that Marion would prefer any body to me!" Such was the style of his soliloquy, from which it will be perceived, that in spite of his discovery of his stupidity, he had not entirely lost his good opinion of himself—"to think that she would marry an old fellow of thirty-six! What will she think of me! How lucky I did not write to my father that I had broken matters off. Do you think she'll ever forgive me, colonel?"
"Forgive you, my, dear fellow?" said the colonel; "girls, as Mrs Sword says, are such fools, they'll forgive any thing."
"And Captain Smith!—a fine gentlemanly fellow—the husband of Marion's sister—I have insulted him—I must fight him, of course."
"No fighting here, young man; you must apologize if you've done wrong; if not, he must apologize to you; Mrs Sword would never look over a duel between two Sucking Pigeons."
"Then I must apologize."
"Ye canna have a better chance—you can't have a better opportunity, as a body may say," said the bilingual major, entering the room, "for here's Captain Smith ready to accept it."
"With all his heart, I assure you," said that gentleman, shaking Chatterton's hand; "so I beg you'll say no more about it."