"Game!" cried Upton, showing his cards upon the table.

"There is so much chaffing about girls and their fortunes, one can't play his game here," said Jennings, as he threw down a handful of gold on the board.

"Who was it ordered the post-horses for to-morrow?" said a youth at the supper-table. "The MacFarlines?"

"No; Lord Kilgoff."

"I a.s.sure you," cried a third, "it was the Kennyf.e.c.ks. There has been a 'flare-up' about money between Cashel and him, and it is said he 'll lose the agency. Who 'll get it, I wonder?"

"Tom Linton, of course," said the former speaker. "I 'd wager he is gone off to Dublin to furbish up securities, or something of that kind."

"Who'd give Tom trust, or go bail for him?" said Frobisher.

A very general laugh did not sound like a contradiction of the sentiment.

"I heard a week ago," said the cornet, "that Kilgoff would stand security to any amount for him."

"Ah, that comes of my Lady's good opinion of him!" cried Jennings.

"Nay, don't say that, it looks so ill-natured," sighed Meek; "and there is really nothing in it. You know she and Tom were old friends. Oh dear, it was so sad!"

"Where does Cashel get such execrable champagne?" said an infantryman, with a very wry expression of face.

"It's dry wine, that's all," said Frobisher, "and about the best ever imported."

"We 'd be very sorry to drink it at our mess, my Lord, I know that,"

said the other, evidently nettled at the correction.

"Yours is the Fifty-third?" said a guardsman.

"No; the Thirty-fifth."

"Aw! same thing," sighed he; and he stooped to select a cigar.

"I wish the Kennyf.e.c.ks were not going," said Upton, drawing his chair closer to Meek's; "there are so few houses one meets them at."

"You should speak to Linton about that," whispered Meek.

"Here's Jim's health,--hip, hip, hurrah!" cried out a white-moustached boy, who had joined a hussar regiment a few weeks before, and was now excessively tipsy.

The laughter at this toast was increased by Meek's holding out his gla.s.s to be filled as he asked, "Of course,--whose health is it?"

"One of Frobisher's trainers," said Upton, readily.

"No, it's no such thing," hiccoughed the hussar. "I was proposing a b.u.mper to the lightest snaffle hand from this to Doncaster--the best judge of a line of country in the kingdom--"

"That's me," said a jolly voice, and at the same instant the door was flung wide, and Tom Linton, splashed from the road, and travel-stained, entered.

"I must say, gentlemen, you are no churls of your wit and pleasantry, for, as I came up the stairs, I could hear every word you were saying."

"Oh dear, how dreadful! and we were talking of _you_ too," said Meek, with a piteous air that made every one laugh.

A thousand questions as to where he had been, whom with, and what for?--all burst upon Linton, who only escaped importunity by declaring that he was half dead with hunger, and would answer nothing till he had eaten.

"So," said he, at length, after having devoted twenty minutes to a grouse-pie of most cunning architecture, "you never guessed where I had been?"

"Oh! we had guesses enough, if that served any purpose."

"I thought it was a bolt, Tom," said Upton; "but as _she_ appeared at breakfast, as usual, I saw my mistake."

"Meek heard that you had gone over to Downing Street to ask for the Irish Secretaryship," said Jennings.

"I said you had been to have a talk with Scott about 'Regulator;' was I far off the mark?"

"Mrs. White suggested an uncle's death," said Frobisher; "but uncles don't die nowadays."

"Did you buy the colt?--Have you backed 'Runjeet Singh?'--Are you to have the agency?--How goes on the borough canva.s.s?" and twenty similar queries now poured in on him.

"Well, I see," cried he, laughing, "I shall sadly disappoint all the calculations founded on my shrewdness and dexterity, for the whole object of my journey was to secure a wardrobe for our fancy ball, which I suddenly heard of as being at Limerick; and so, not trusting the mission to another, I started off myself, and here I am, with materials for more Turks, Monks, Sailors, Watchmen, Greeks, Jugglers, and Tyrolese, than ever travelled in anything save a caravan with one horse."

"Are your theatrical intentions all abandoned?" cried Jennings.

"I trust not," said Linton; "but I heard that Miss Meek had decided on the ball to come off first."

"Hip! hip! hip!" was moaned out, in very lachrymose tone, from a sofa where the boy hussar, very sick and very tipsy, lay stretched on his back.

"Who is that yonder?" asked Linton.

"A young fellow of ours," said Jennings, indolently.

"I thought they made their heads better at Sandhurst."

"They used in my time," said Upton; "but you have no idea how the thing has gone down."

"Quite true," chimed in another; "and I don't think we 've seen the worst of it yet. Do you know, they talk of an examination for all candidates for commissions!"

"Well, I must say," lisped the guardsman, "I believe it would be an improvement for the 'line.'"

"The household brigade can dispense with information," said an infantry captain.

"I demur to the system altogether," said Linton. "Physicians tell us that the intellectual development is always made at the expense of the physical, and as one of the duties of a British army is to suffer yellow fever in the West Indies and cholera in the East, I vote for leaving them strong in const.i.tution and intact in strength as vacant heads and thoughtless skulls can make them."

"Oh dear me! yes," sighed Meek, who, by one of his mock concurrences, effectually blinded the less astute portion of the audience from seeing Linton's impertinence.

"What has been doing here in my absence?" said Linton; "have you no event worth recording for me?"

"There is a story," said Upton, "that Cashel and Kennyf.e.c.k have quarrelled,--a serious rupture, they say, and not to be repaired."

"How did it originate? Something about the management of the property?"