5

THE DONKEYSHIRE MILITIA.

BY OUIDA.

I.

LENNOX DUNBAR.

VERY glorious we were to sight in our scarlet coats and our yellow facings, our pipe-clayed belts and our struggling moustaches, our brannew swords and our beautiful Albert hats, with the delightful little peak behind to conduct the rain into our necks, and the funny little white knob a-top, like a floured tennis-ball or a guelder-rose.

Very glorious we were, the East Donkeyshire Militia (Light Infantry); and when we came down the street in full marching order, with our band in front of us clad picturesquely in white, as if they'd come out en chemise by mistake, and our bugleman playing one tune, and our fugleman another, and our drum performing a chorus peculiar to itself, I assure you we didn't think the Blues, or the Coldstreams, or Cardigan's Eleventh would have been half so swell.

The East Donkeyshire was embodied in '54, when Britannia took all her hounds to draw the Crimean cover, and left the old dogs and pups at home to guard the kennel, and bark at poachers if they couldn't bite them. And, in the town of Snobleton, the embodiment of the East Donkeyshire was held by ladies as a decided blessing, and by their spiritual pastors and masters as an especial curse. For, in Snobleton, males between twenty and fifty were a rarity, and some eighteen eligible scarlet coats (even though those coats were militia), fit to be hunted down and married out of hand, were, as ladies are constituted, a great boon to the young Venuses of East Donkeyshire. I assure you it was the most flattering thing in the world, the first day we were billeted there, to see the lots of pretty little faces that came to the windows, and the pretty little figures that clad themselves in their most voluminous crinolines, and put on their best-fitting gloves, and their daintiest boots, and patrolled with an innocent, unconscious air before the Marquis's Arms, where our mess was established.

I can't tell you, I'm sure, how I came to join the Donkeyshire; for though, to the best of my belief, I shall never see a brief in my life, I belong to Middle Temple, and had about as much business in the militia as a sailor has at a meet. But I had nothing to do just then; my old chum, Dunbar, was a captain in it, for a lark, as he said; and so I, for a lark too, bought a beautiful Albert hat, and thought, as I surveyed myself in it, that if the Trojan helmet anyway resembled it, Hector's small boy showed good taste in being afraid of it.

The Donkeyshire was a sort of zoological gardens, so varied were the specimens of the genus homo it offered for exhibition. First, of course, was the colonel, Sir Cadwallader de Vaux, who knew as much about manoeuvring a battalion as I do about crochet or cooking. Then there was the lieutenant-colonel, Mounteagle ("Mount Etna" we called him, he was so deucedly peppery), a short, stout, choleric little fellow, but nevertheless a very fair soldier. Spicer, the major, who, having

been an officer of Sepoy cavalry, was of course eminently fitted to drill militia infantry. Popleton, romantic, musical, and spoony, son of the Donkeyshire banker. Stickleback, who squinted, and was lamentably ugly, yet tried hard to be a fast man, but couldn't. Muskett, our adjutant, who limped, we said from sciatica, he from a ball at Jellalabad. Eagle, whose governor we suspected of trade, and who, like a snob as he was, dressed loud, and was great in studs, watch-chains, and rings. And then last, but not least in the Donkeyshire, since we were the sole leaven of gentlemanism, your humble servant, Vansittart; Carlton de Vaux, whom everybody called Charlie, who had joined "only," Sir Cadwallader impressed on us, " for example;" and my old chum, Lennox Dunbar, who had first been a middy, then spent a term or two at college, then went on the stage half a year, then into the Hussars till he fought a duel and got a gentle hint to sell out, then led a Bohemian's life on the Continent, and lastly turned littérateur, and wrote slashing articles in the periodicals. Now, having eight hundred a year left him by an old aunt, he was a captain in the Donkeyshire, and the finest fellow that ever stood six feet in his stockings. 'Pon my word it was the best fun in life to see how all the girls looked at Dunbar when he swung with his cavalry step through the streets. Why, even the vieilles filles going district visiting with strong copies of The Pulpit, Mr. Ryle's tracts, or Mr. Molyneux's sermons, neatly bound in brown paper, were obliged to give furtive glances at his soldierly figure, handsome face, and silky whiskers and moustaches-ay, and sighed, too, as they gazed, though they wouldn't have confessed it; no, not if put to the rack.

"Deuce take it, this place seems as dull as a graveyard," said he, the first night at mess. "My ten talents of attraction are buried in a napkin. Why did you ask me to join, colonel? Van here will hang himself if he hasn't twenty pretty women to make love to."

"That's one word for me and two for yourself, Dunbar," said I. "I bet you a pony before a month's out you'll be buried in a shower of pretty pink notes."

"Some of the girls here ain't bad-looking," yawned Stickleback; " but the place is certainly awfully slow."

"By Jove! there's your sister, Pop; you must introduce us all. I danced with her a month ago at the Charity Ball, and I noticed she'd a very pretty foot," cried Charlie de Vaux; "and then there are those three women-what the deuce is their name ?-who dress alike, and walk up and down High-street twenty times in a morning."

"The Breloques, you mean? Oh, they're nobodies!" drawled Eagle. "They're dangerous. They try and hook every man they meet. Adela has been engaged six times to my knowledge; and I've a great idea their braids are false."

"Like your figure," murmured Dunbar.

"Are there no widows? I

like widows. They're easy game, and don't compromise one."

"All's easy game in Donkeyshire," answered De Vaux. "By George! we're so rare, that some ladies thought of putting me under a glass case as the only good-looking man."

"And label you, Visitors are requested to look, but not to fall in love, as the specimen can't stand it'-eh ?" laughed Dunbar. "Well,

you and I have got a nice little covey of partridges where we hang out, Van."

"Yes. Confound you. You took care of that, Dunbar," said old "Mount Etna," bursting with laughter and pale ale. "You got the best billet there was, as far as the beaux yeux went."

Well, colonel," said Dunbar, "all wise men have their weaknesses. Richelieu's was cats, Byron's swimming, Peter the Great's was drawing teeth, and mine is-women. Let's toast them!"

"I wish my sister heard you classing women among weaknesses. What fun it would be to hear her fire up. What beastly sherry this is!" said De Vaux.

"And the claret's a swindle. I'll speak about it if the adjutant won't. Have you a sister? What's she like ?"

"How should I know. Come and see," responded Charlie.

"She

pulled me up in a line from Horace the other day, little puss! which I wanted to impose on the governor."

Dunbar looked disgusted. "Oh! Blue ?"

"Lor! bless you, no, not a bit of it. She sings all day and waltzes all night, but she knows no end for all that."

"Knows Latin! I shall hate her," thought Dunbar. "I say, colonel, which is it to be-loo, whist, or vingt et un?"

It was a pouring night. Luckless Popleton (nicknamed Ginger-pop, from the hue of his numerous curls) was on guard, and went shivering round under a dainty umbrella to the different billets and down to the guard-house, and we telling him to put his feet into hot water, and be sure and have some gruel when he came back, sat down to the loo-table.

Dunbar and I lodged over a pastrycook's, the Ude of Donkeyshire, and the "Covey" alluded to were the pastrycook's two daughters, Fanny and Sophy. Very handsome girls they were, and they knew it too. They were fine, dashing, well-dressed brunettes, and from the grammar-boys, who came to sigh their souls out over "tuck," to old Spicer, who, stoic though he was, liked to come and have his mulligatawny there, the two Miss Toffys were the admiration of Snobleton. "Notre magasin," as Dunbar called it, was a general attraction, and the amount of ices, cherrybrandy, and mock-turtle old Toffy sold, thanks to his daughters' black eyes, must have swelled his receipts enormously.

The militia were godsends to the Covey, and they smiled impartially on us all, for they were prudent young ladies, and fished at the same time with minnows and gudgeons, worms and flies, dead and live bait; so that if the big fish wouldn't nibble, the little ones might. Dunbar was soon in favour with both. In fact, I don't think the woman ever lived with whom, if he chose, Dunbar wasn't in favour. "My dear fellow," he used to say, "I'm a modern Pygmalion; the very statues would fall in love with me if I asked 'em. It's only a little knack that's wanted with women." The "little knack" he possessed, that was very certain, and a greater flirt never whispered pretty things in a deux temps. But though he dressed as well as D'Orsay, was as handsome as the Apollo-shot, swam, rode, and played billiards better than any man I know-sang, and drew caricatures like Garcia and Cruikshank--and, withal, wrote the most pungent brochures and sparkling tales under the nom de plume of “Latakia”—yet I give you my word he hadn't a spark of vanity in his

composition. Indeed, he was fond of calling himself the black sheep of his family, and saying his terrier had done as much good in its generation as he had during the thirty-two years he had walked to and fro upon the earth. He and De Vaux were the "belles" of the Donkeyshire. Charlie was a pretty boy of nineteen or so, with golden curls, and black eyes as soft as a girl's, and when we marched to the cricket-field, and the Snobleton gamins shrieked forth, "The melishee's a comin'!" many were the faces that came to the window (to talk to the canary, of course), and many the round hats we encountered (by accident, on purpose), for the sake of the handsome captain and ensign, whom even the Albert hat couldn't wholly disfigure. The cricket-field was our parade-ground. There did the Awkward Squad suffer its pain and torture-there did old Mount Etna roar fruitlessly, "To the right face!" the Donkeyshire invariably turning thereupon to the left face-there did we, if ordered to form into section, form into line as sure as a gun, and when Muskett screamed, "Halt!" did we set off double-quick-there did Hodges stamp on Bill Stubbs's toe, and Jack fire his ramrod into Brother Ambrose's eye, and Private A. make ready while Private B. was firing, and Sergeant C. call out, "Left, right!" while Sergeant D. marched right, left, and my company halted stock-still, while Dunbar's marched double-quick, and Eagle's formed into line, and Popleton's into square, and we finally got all muddled together in inextricable confusion, and finished the day's manoeuvres with a grand scene of the gallant Donkeyshire entirely routed and demoralised by itself.

But the Snobletonians thought us very grand, so it didn't matter, and when we went full figg to church, with our band performing the three different tunes at once, and we sat in the mayor's pew, with our men in front of us, and old Mount Etna dozed and woke himself with a jerk in the wrong places, and Spicer sat bolt upright, eyeing the lectern eagle fiercely, and Ginger-pop looked shyly into the Breloques's pew, and Stickleback stuck his glass in the eye that squinted, and Dunbar caricatured the curate on the fly-leaf of his Church Service, the young ladies glanced up at us when they appeared to be reading the lessons, and thought the Donkeyshire Militia was the finest corps ever embodied.

II.

BEATRICE DE VAUX.

FOR the next month we set Snobleton going as that prudish-proud and poverty-stricken borough had never gone before. Ginger-pop's governor's house was always free to us, and as Georgie Popleton was a good-looking girl, though confoundedly affected, we accepted the banker's carte blanche, and the Breloques's too. Adela, Augusta, and Lavinia, three fine women, with, somebody said, 10,000l. each-desperate flirts, and very good waltzers-made their mother's house very agreeable, especially to the young birds who didn't doubt the complexions, quiz the style, and know that the smiles had been given to twenty others before 'em. Dunbar woke up the governors of the subscription-rooms, had oyster suppers and whist established there, and introduced pool. He made a row about the mess wines, too, and forced the Marquis's Arms to give us really good dinners. He satirised the Donkeyshire, lampooned Stickleback's sporting efforts, Eagle's airs, and Pop's weaknesses, and drew caricatures of

M'Dougall, our surgeon, who went clanking about in his sword at all hours, he was so proud of it; of Ginger-pop warbling, "Will you love me then as now ?" under Adela's window in the dead of night; of Pop, again, as he appeared the 1st of September, when, being unused to powder, his gun kicked, and he fell flat on his back, to the admiration of all beholders; of Spicer eating ragoûts, and Charlie ices in "notre magasin," with the Covey smiling generously on both in short, of all the scenes and ways-and they were not rare-in which the Donkeyshire made fools of themselves.

"Where's Charlie ? Does anybody know?" said Dunbar, one Monday evening, when we were playing loo in his rooms.

"I do," answered Stickleback. "He's down below, making love to Miss Fanny. He came in with us, but the young lady waylaid him." "Master Charlie's good taste. I thought all the tin he laid out on cherry-tipple, vermicelli, and soda-water, wasn't for nothing," said Dunbar, who'd taken a liking to the young fellow, as the boy had equally to him. “I say, I saw his twin-sister to-day. Do any of you happen to know

her ?"

"What! Beatrice? No; she's only just home from Paris," said Eagle, whom Sir Cadwallader would no more have introduced to his daughter than he'd have introduced a costermonger. "What's she like? Come, tell us, Dunbar."

"She's very pretty," said Lennox, critically; "that I'll admit: chesnut hair, long dark eyes to match, soft skin, nice figure, and a very little hand and pretty foot, and stands up clean. She looks clever, decidedly so, and-it's a pity she knows Latin! What are trumps? Thank you. I say, Pop, how far is it gone? Has she named the day? We'll come in full figg, band and all.”

Popleton blushed, and lost half a guinea in his confusion.

"What an ungrateful fellow you are not to tell your bosom friends," cried Dunbar. " Well, you won't deny, Pop, I hope, that you were singing,She sleeps, my lady sleeps!' at two o'clock last night, and that Adela opened her window like an angel as she is, and dropped a threecornered note at your feet-will you, eh ?"

“I—I—really, I never knew that you saw me," murmured Gin

ger-pop.

Dunbar shouted with laughter at his random shot having hit home. "Of course you didn't. I defy any man to stare devoutly at a thirdstory window and look up the street at the same time. I'll take Miss,' Van. Hallo, Charlie! here you are at last. Wasn't Fanny kind tonight ?"

The boy laughed. "What are you playing for, Dunbar ?"

"As usual-maximum, ten. Don't make yourself ill with ices, Charlie ; you had a dozen to-day, I think? The Covey are all very well, but they're not worth a bilious fever; besides, they like old Spicer's yellow-boys better than your yellow curls, mon garçon. I say, I saw your sister to-day, with the governor."

"Pussy! did you? Well, what do you think of her?"

"That she might be charming if she didn't know Latin. Her eyes are like Capefigue's description of Du Barry's."

"What, the Revalenta Arabica man ?" asked Popleton, staring. "Not exactly, most innocent Ginger," laughed Dunbar. "Take