On the Grand Stand were to be seen most of the rank and fashion of the neighborhood, and a goodly show of that class of people who are always to be found about towns which are also military stations—the class of people who have daughters to marry, and not much money to marry them with. There were all the Scarlet Lancer ladies in full force, from the colonel’s wife in blue velvet and sables, to the quartermaster’s lady in a hard felt hat, with long diamond and pearl ear-rings. There were officers in cords and boots, their silken finery hidden by Newmarket coats. And there was the bride, Mrs. Allardyce, in pink and gray, the major’s racing colors—oh lor! as the fellows said when they saw her. And there was Miss Mignon, a little three-year-old belle, got up in Bootles’s colors—scarlet, purple, and gold—adapted in her small case to a warm frock of purple velvet, braided with scarlet and gold, and on her golden curls a jockey-cap to match it. Utterly absurd, most people said, but Bootles didn’t seem to see it. Nor, for the matter of that, did Miss Mignon herself. Held by Bootles, or, when Bootles was riding, by Lacy, she sat on the broad ledge of the balcony and surveyed the world, like a queen in miniature. It was a fine place for seeing; yes, and a fine place for hearing too, as Lacy testified afterwards in his own peculiar style of delivery. “Er—I and Miss Mignon were waiting for Bootles to come down the lawn, when—er—a laday next to us—er—a little unpwrepossessing person—I found out afterwards that her name is Berwry—with a nose like a teapot-spout, and a mouth of the bull-dog ordah—little daughter, by-the-bye, pretty much of the same type, but just a shade less hideous—suddenly electwrified us by pulling out a huge pair of gold eye-glasses, and holding the wrace-card at arm’s-length. “‘Ow!’ said she, in a mincing voice, when Miles came down the lane looking like a sack of flour in a purple satin jacket—‘Ow, CAP-tain Ferwrahs! Ow, Dorothy, my deah, CAP-tain Ferwrahs! _Vewry_ handsome—and how _beau_-tifully he wrides! Ow, I’m shaw he’ll win, and what a _lovely_ horse! CAP-tain Ferwrahs! He’s vewry handsome.’ “Well—er—I gave Miss Mignon a gwreat squeeze to hold her tongue—and she did. This Mrs.—er—Berwry went on expatiating on Miles’s great beauty of person, and on the absolute certainty of his winning. ‘And his pet name is Bootles,’ she informed us. His _pet_ name! Well, pwresently Bootles came sailing down the lawn in all his glowry, and Miss Mignon quite forgot the old girl, and shouted out to him. ‘Bootles,’ she called—‘Bootles.’ “Bootles glanced up, and waved his hand, and—er—the old party called Berwry turned wound and eyed her sharply, saw the scarlet, purple, and gold of her dwress, looked at her card, and said, witheringly, ‘Ow, I don’t know _him_,’ as if there were a dozen Captain Ferwers knocking about, and this was one of the eleven she didn’t know.