Saxon trooper runs
headlong to flesh. 'Tis the beer that fattens and swells him. Properly
to speak, we've no light cavalry. The French are studying it, and when
they take to studying, they come to the fore. I'll pay a visit to their
breeding establishments. We've no studying here, and not a scrap of
system that I see. All the country seems armed for bullying the facts,
till the periodical panic arrives, and then it 's for lying flat and
roaring--and we'll drop the curtain, if you please.'

'You say we,' returned Mr. Adister. 'I hear you launched at us English
by the captain, your cousin, who has apparently yet to learn that we are
one people.'

'We 're held together and a trifle intermixed; I fancy it's we with
him and with me when we're talking of army or navy,' said Patrick.
'But Captain Con's a bit of a politician: a poor business, when there's
nothing to be done.'

'A very poor business!' Mr. Adister rejoined,

'If you'd have the goodness to kindle his enthusiasm, he'd be for the
first person plural, with his cap in the air,' said Patrick.

'I detest enthusiasm.

'You're not obliged to adore it to give it a wakener.

'Pray, what does that mean?'

Patrick cast about to reply to the formal challenge for an explanation.

He began on it as it surged up to him: 'Well, sir, the country that's
got hold of us, if we 're not to get loose. We don't count many millions
in Europe, and there's no shame in submitting to force majeure, if a
stand was once made; and we're mixed up, 'tis true, well or ill; and
we're stronger, both of us, united than tearing to strips: and so,
there, for the past! so long as we can set our eyes upon something to
admire, instead of a bundle squatting fat on a pile of possessions and
vowing she won't budge; and taking kicks from a big foot across the
Atlantic, and shaking bayonets out of her mob-cap for a little one's
cock of the eye at her: and she's all for the fleshpots, and calls the
rest of mankind fools because they're not the same: and so long as she
can trim her ribands and have her hot toast and tea, with a suspicion of
a dram in it, she doesn't mind how heavy she sits: nor that 's not the
point, nor 's the land question, nor the potato crop, if only she wore
the right sort of face to look at, with a bit of brightness about it, to
show an idea inside striking alight from the day that's not yet nodding
at us, as the tops of big mountains do: or if she were only braced
and gallant, an