grandmother began to think that I was not so bad a boy as I used to be.

As she treated me more kindly, I felt less inclined to teaze her
although the spirit of mischief was as undiminished as ever, and was
shown in various ways.

I may as well here observe, that out of the many admirers of my aunt
Milly, there were only two who appeared to be at all constant in their
attention. One was Lieutenant Flat, who was positively smitten, and
would have laid his pay and person at her feet, had he received anything
like encouragement; but my aunt disliked him in the first place, and,
moreover, had a very strong feeling towards Captain Bridgeman.

Mr Flat was certainly a very fine-looking soldier, being tall, erect,
and well-made, but he was at the same time not over-brilliant; he was,
as an officer, the very sort of person my father Ben was as a private.

But the other party, Captain Bridgeman, did not come forward; he
appeared to be in doubt, and not at all able to make up his mind.

The fact was, that my mother being married to a private, made any match
with the sister objectionable to the whole corps, as it would be
derogatory that one sister should be the wife of a private, and the
other of an officer. Ben would have been able to say, "My
brother-in-law, the captain of my division," which would never have
done; and this Captain Bridgeman felt, and therefore resisted, as well
as he could, the inroads which my aunt's beauty and mirth had made into
his heart. My aunt was exactly a person to suit Captain Bridgeman as a
helpmate, had it not been for this unfortunate alliance of my mother's.

Lieutenant Flat was too stupid and indifferent to the opinion of the
other officers, to care anything about what they thought; he would have
married Milly long before, but my aunt, who had made up her mind to
marry an officer, did not yet despair of obtaining the captain; and
although she would not positively dismiss Lieutenant Flat, she merely
kept him as a sort of reserve, to fall back upon when every other chance
was gone.

I should like, if I possibly could, to give the reader some idea of my
mother's circulating-library and sort of universal commodity shop: it
was a low-windowed building, one story high, but running a long way
back, where it was joined to a small parlour, in which we generally sat
during the day, as it was convenient in case of company or customers,
the little parlour having a glass door, which permitted us to