“Yes, sir,” returned he of the Fox and Hounds;—“I wore the king’s livery for fifteen years; and, God bless him, now that I have done my work, he allows me two-and-eightpence a-day to enable me to drink his health in comfort.”
“You seem, when you bade Brown-Bess good-bye, to have taken up comfortable quarters here, my friend.”
“I am, thank God, not only comfortable, but in garrison I hope for life. When I returned home, I married the sergeant-major’s widow. Well, we each had laid by a bit of money—put it together—took this house—and after being five years keeping the business going on, things have gone straight enough with us, and we are better by the half than when we entered it. I wish every worn-out soldier had as snug cantonments for old age.”
“Have you served abroad?”
“I began in Holland with the Duke of York, and I finished in Spain with poor Sir John.”
“What regiments did you serve in?”
“Never but in one, the old steady fifty —th. Under its honoured colours I stood my last field, at Corunna, and fought my first one at Malines.”
“You were in the grenadiers; do you remember who commanded?”
“As stout a soldier as ever took a company into fire—Colonel O’Halloran.”
“Then you fought under my father.”