From the upper end of the table, where sat the two veterans and the doctor, came, mellowed by distance, grim recollections of the Peninsula, with stories of Picton and Crawford, “the fighting brigade” and “the light division,” interspersed with endless Indian narratives, equally grim, of “how our fellows were carried off by the cholera at Cawnpore,” and how many tigers were shot, “when we lay in cantonments at Dum-dum;” the running accompaniment to the whole being a constant reference to so-and-so “of _ours_,” without allusion to which possessive pronoun, few military men are able to make much progress in conversation. Nor was Colonel Tulip silent, but his conversation was of a very lofty and, as it were, ethereal order,—quite transparent, in fact, if any one had been there to analyse it. It related chiefly to the magnates at the Horse Guards,—to what “the Duke” said to him on certain occasions specified,—to Prince Albert’s appearance at the last levee,—to a favourite bay charger of his own,—to the probability that Lord Dawdle would get into the corps on the first exchange,—and to a partly-formed intention of applying to the Commander-in-Chief to change the regimental facings from buff to green. The mess-table, after four hours’ enjoyment of it in this intellectual manner, was finally abandoned for Captain Cushion’s “quarters,” that gallant officer having taken “quite a fancy to the youngster,”—not so much, perhaps, on account of the youngster being a Lord’s youngster, as because, in all probability, there was something squeezeable in him, which was slightly indicated in his countenance. But whatever of the kind there might indeed have been, did not come out that evening, the amiable Captain preferring rather to initiate by example and the show of good fellowship, than by directly urging the neophyte to play. The rubber, therefore, was made up without him, and the new Ensign, with two or three more of his rank, confined themselves to cigars and brandy and water, a liberal indulgence in which completed what the wine had begun, and before midnight chimed the Hon. George Spoonbill was—to use the mildest expression,—as unequivocally tipsy as the fondest parent or guardian could possibly have desired a young gentleman to be on the first night of his entering “the Service.”