My host announced that dinner was quite ready, and I found Biddy in the eating-room. She was prettily dressed, as an invalid should be; and, notwithstanding her cold, looked remarkably handsome. I should to a certainty have been over head and ears in love, had not Maunsell's innuendo respecting the young dragoon operated as a damper. Dinner proceeded as dinners always do, and Roger was bent on hospitality. I fancied that Biddy regarded me with some interest, while momentarily I felt an increasing tenderness that would have ended, I suppose, in a direct declaration, but for the monitory hint which I had received from my old schoolfellow. I was dying to know what Maunsell's allusion pointed at, and I casually threw out a feeler. "And you are so dull, you say? Yes, Biddy, you must miss the dragoons sadly. By the way, there was a friend of mine here. Did you know Tom Hastings?" I never saw an elderly gentleman and his daughter more confused. Biddy blushed like a peony, and Roger seemed desperately bothered. At last the quartermaster responded, "Fact is--as a military man, showed the cavalry some attention--constantly at the house--anxious to be civil--helped them to make out forage--but d--d wild--obliged to cut, and keep them at a distance." "Ay, Maunsell hinted something of that." I thought Biddy would have fainted, and Roger grew red as the footman's collar. "Pshaw! d--d gossiping chap that Maunsell. Young Hastings--infernal hemp--used to ride with Biddy. Persuaded her to get on a horse of his--ran away--threw her--confined at this inn for a week--never admitted him to my house afterwards." Oh! here was the whole mystery unravelled! No wonder Roger was indignant, and that Biddy would redden at the recollection. It was devilish unhandsome of Mr. Hastings; and I expressed my opinion in a way that evidently pleased my host and his heiress, and showed how much I disapproved of the conduct of that _roué_ the dragoon. My fair friend rose to leave us. Her shawl caught in the chair, and I was struck with the striking change a few years had effected in my old playfellow. She was grown absolutely stout. I involuntarily noticed it. "Lord! Biddy, how fat you are grown!" A deeper blush than even when I named that luckless dragoon, flushed to her very brows at the observation, while the quartermaster rather testily exclaimed, "Ay, she puts on her clothes as if they were tossed on with a pitchfork, since she got this cold. D--it! Biddy. I say, tighten yourself, woman! Tighten yourself, or I won't be plased!"