bore a high character, and was a good and clever officer,
but that went for nothing against the old man's whim. He made a very
good husband, too; but even this did not move his father-in-law, who had
never held any intercourse with him or his wife since the day of their
marriage, and who had never seen his own grandchildren. Though not so
bitterly prejudiced as the old father, the Captain's wife's friends had
their doubts about the marriage. The place was not a military station,
and they were quiet country folk who knew very little about soldiers,
while what they imagined was not altogether favorable to "red-coats," as
they called them.

Soldiers are well-looking generally, it is true, and the Captain was
more than well-looking--he was handsome; brave, of course it is their
business, and the Captain had V. C. after his name and several bits of
ribbon on his patrol jacket. But then, thought the good people, they are
here to-day and gone to-morrow, you "never know where you have them;"
they are probably in debt, possibly married to several women in several
foreign countries, and, though they are very courteous in society, who
knows how they treat their wives when they drag them off from their
natural friends and protectors to distant lands, where no one can call
them to account?

"Ah, poor thing!" said Mrs. John Bull, junior, as she took off her
husband's coat on his return from business, a week after the Captain's
wedding, "I wonder how she feels? There's no doubt the old man behaved
disgracefully; but it's a great risk marrying a soldier. It stands to
reason, military men aren't domestic; and I wish--Lucy Jane, fetch your
papa's slippers, quick!--she'd had the sense to settle down comfortably
among her friends with a man who would have taken care of her."

"Officers are a wild set, I expect," said Mr. Bull, complacently, as he
stretched his limbs in his own particular arm-chair, into which no
member of his family ever intruded. "But the red-coats carry the day
with plenty of girls who ought to know better. You women are always
caught by a bit of finery. However, there's no use our bothering our
heads about it. As she has brewed she must bake."

The Captain's wife's baking was lighter and more palatable than her
friends believed. The Captain, who took off his own coat when he came
home, and never wore slippers but in his dressing-room, was domestic
enough.

A selfish companion must, doubtless, be a great trial amid