"To think of Granite Keane being caught!" shouted one young fellow. "I should as soon have thought of the Pyramids walking over to the Sphinx, and marrying her." "Poor devil! I pity him," sneered Henley of Trinity, aged nineteen. "He don't require much pity, my dear fellow; I think he's pretty comfortable," rejoined Sydie. "He did, to be sure, when he was trying to beat sense into your brain-box, but that's over for the present." "Come, tell us about the wedding," said Somerset of King's. "I was sorry I couldn't go down." "Well," began Sydie, stretching his legs and putting down his pipe, "she--_the_ she was dressed in white tulle and----" "Bother the dress. Go ahead!" "The dress was no bother, it was the one subject in life to the women. You must listen to the dress, because I asked the prettiest girl there for the description of it to enlighten your minds, and it was harder to learn than six books of Horace. The bridesmaids wore tarlatane à la Princesse Stéphanie, trois jupes bouillonnées, jupe desous de soie glacée, guirlandes couleur dea yeux impériaux d'Eugénie, corsets décolletés garnis de ruches de ruban du----" "For Heaven's sake, hold your tongue!" cried Somerset. "That jargon's worse than the Yahoos'. The dead languages are bad enough to learn, but women's living language of fashion is ten hundred times worse. The twelve girls were dressed in blue and white, and thought themselves angels--we understand. Cut along." "Gunter was prime," continued Sydie, "and the governor was prime, too--splendid old buck; only when he gave her away he was very near saying, 'Devil take it!' which might have had a novel, but hardly a solemn, effect. Little Fay was delightful--for all the world like a bit of incarnated sunshine. Keane was granite all over, except his eyes, and they were lava; if we hadn't, for our own preservation, let him put her in a carriage and started 'em off, he might have become dangerous, after the manner of Etna, ice outside and red-hot coals within. The bridesmaids tears must have washed the church for a week, and made it rather a damp affair. One would scarcely think women were so anxious to marry, to judge from the amount of grief they get up at a friend's sacrifice. It looks uncommonly like envy; but it _isn't_, we're sure! The ball was like most other balls: alternate waltzing and flirtation, a vast lot of nonsense talked, and a vast lot of champagne drunk--Cupid running about in every direction, and a tremendous run on all the amatory poets--Browning and Tennyson being worked as hard as cab-horses, and used up pretty much as those quadrupeds--dandies suffering self-inflicted torture from tight boots, and saying, like Cranmer, when he held his hand in the fire, that it was rather agreeable than otherwise, considering it drew admiration--spurs getting entangled in ladies' dresses, and ladies making use thereof for a display of amiability, which the dragoons are very much mistaken if they fancied