“Pooh! pooh! she’s only sick of the soldiers,” answered Major Bellenden. “She’s not accustomed to see one acquaintance led out to be shot, and another marching off to actual service, with some chance of not finding his way back again. She would soon be used to it, if the civil war were to break out again.”
“God forbid, brother!” said Lady Margaret.
“Ay, Heaven forbid, as you say—and, in the meantime, I’ll take a hit at trick-track with Harrison.”
“He has ridden out, sir,” said Gudyill, “to try if he can hear any tidings of the battle.”
“D—n the battle,” said the Major; “it puts this family as much out of order as if there had never been such a thing in the country before—and yet there was such a place as Kilsythe, John.”
“Ay, and as Tippermuir, your honour,” replied Gudyill, “where I was his honour my late master’s rear-rank man.”
“And Alford, John,” pursued the Major, “where I commanded the horse; and Innerlochy, where I was the Great Marquis’s aid-de-camp; and Auld Earn, and Brig o’ Dee.”
“And Philiphaugh, your honour,” said John.
“Umph!” replied the Major; “the less, John, we say about that matter, the better.”
However, being once fairly embarked on the subject of Montrose’s campaigns, the Major and John Gudyill carried on the war so stoutly, as for a considerable time to keep at bay the formidable enemy called Time, with whom retired veterans, during the quiet close of a bustling life, usually wage an unceasing hostility.