love
lost between me and Colonel Washington, it must be owned that your
favourite (I am not jealous, Hal) is a brave man and a good officer.
The family respect him very much, and the General is always asking his
opinion. Indeed, he is almost the only man who has seen the Indians in
their war-paint, and I own I think he was right in firing upon Mons.
Jumonville last year.

"There is to be no more suite to that other quarrel at Benson's Tavern
than there was to the proposed battle between Colonel W. and a certain
young gentleman who shall be nameless. Captain Waring wished to pursue
it on coming into camp, and brought the message from Captain Grace,
which your friend, who is as bold as Hector, was for taking up, and
employed a brother aide-de-camp, Colonel Wingfield, on his side. But
when Wingfield heard the circumstances of the quarrel, how it had arisen
from Grace being drunk, and was fomented by Waring being tipsy, and how
the two 44th gentlemen had chosen to insult a militia officer, he swore
that Colonel Washington should not meet the 44th men; that he would
carry the matter straightway to his Excellency, who would bring the
two captains to a court-martial for brawling with the militia, and
drunkenness, and indecent behaviour, and the captains were fain to put
up their toasting-irons, and swallow their wrath. They were good-natured
enough out of their cups, and ate their humble-pie with very good
appetites at a reconciliation dinner which Colonel W. had with the 44th,
and where he was as perfectly stupid and correct as Prince Prettyman
need be. Hang him! He has no faults, and that's why I dislike him. When
he marries that widow--ah me! what a dreary life she will have of it."

"I wonder at the taste of some men, and the effrontery of some women,"
says Madam Esmond, laying her teacup down. "I wonder at any woman who
has been married once, so forgetting herself as to marry again! Don't
you, Mountain?"

"Monstrous!" says Mountain, with a queer look.

Dempster keeps his eyes steadily fixed on his glass of punch. Harry
looks as if he was choking with laughter, or with some other concealed
emotion, but his mother says, "Go on, Harry! Continue with your
brother's journal. He writes well: but, ah, will he ever be able to
write like my papa?"

Harry resumes: "We keep the strictest order here in camp, and the orders
against drunkenness and ill-behaviour on the part of the men are very
severe. The roll of each company is