“Will you think me a beast if I say yes, Captain? Time was when I didn’t care for a canter of ten or fifteen miles in the morning no more than yourself; and that’s no small boast; God forgive me, but I never see that clover-field where you pounded the Englishman, without swearing there never was a leap made before or since. Is this Mickey, Captain? Faith, and it’s a fine, brown, hearty-looking chap you’re grown, Mickey. That’s mighty pleasant sherry, but where would there be good wine if it wasn’t here? Oh, I remember now what it was I wanted. Peter,--my son Peter, a slip of a boy, he’s only sixteen,--well, d’you see, he’s downright deranged about the army: he used to see your name in the papers every day, and that terrible business at--what’s the name of the place?--where you rode on the chap’s back up the breach.” “Ciudad Rodrigo, perhaps,” said I, scarcely able to repress a laugh. “Well, sir, since that he’ll hear of nothing but going into the army; ay, and into the dragoons too. Now, Captain, isn’t it mighty expensive in the dragoons?” “Why, no, not particularly so,--at least in the regiment I served with.” “I promised him I’d ask you; the boy’s mad, that’s the fact. I wish, Captain, you’d just reason with him a little; he’ll mind what you say, there’s no fear of that. And you see, though I’d like to do what’s fair, I’m not going to cut off the girls for the sake of the boys; with the blessing of Providence, they’ll never be able to reproach me for that. What I say is this: treat _me_ well, and I’ll treat you the same. Marry the man my choice would pick out for you, and it’s not a matter of a thousand or two I’ll care for. There was Bodkin--you remember him?” said he, with a grin; “he proposed for Mary, but since the quarrel with you, she could never bear the sight of him, and Alley wouldn’t come down to dinner if he was in the house. Mary’s greatly altered; I wish you heard her sing ‘I’d mourn the hopes that leave me.’ Queer girl she is; she was little more than a child when you were here, and she remembers you just as if it was yesterday.” While Mr. Blake ran on at this rate, now dilating upon my own manifold virtues and accomplishments, now expatiating upon the more congenial theme,--the fascinations of his fair daughters, and the various merits of his sons,--I could not help feeling how changed our relative position was since our last meeting; the tone of cool and vulgar patronage he then assumed towards the unformed country lad was now converted into an air of fawning and deferential submission, still more distasteful.