"I don't--best thing he could do," said Sir John. "If the service was as it ought to be, that fellow would rise like a shell. If I had sons I'd put them in the ranks, every one, and push 'em, sir--for an example, if nothing else--sons, ah!" Here Sir John shrugged his shoulders slightly, shrank back into his chair, and, in dismal contemplation of that distressing subject, made an end of his breakfast. "However," he said, after a pause of thought, devoted to his own engrossing affairs, "I'll give in to the popular opinion of course here, as I always do. We'll look the fellow up, Sutherland: he shall have his commission; I've got no claims upon me, at present, at least. Musgrave's boy shall not go to the bad if I can help it. I suppose, after all, it's not likely to help a young man's morals to throw him loose on London, out of his own class into a barrack room, eh?--where he don't care a straw for the public opinion, and where the fellows get drunk, eh? Where do you suppose now he'll go?" "He's six foot one, if he's an inch," said the Colonel, meditatively; "of course into the Guards." "Guards!--ah! lots of fellows there that have seen better days," said Sir John--"wild fellows, that break their mothers' hearts, and bring gray hairs to the grave, and so on. Regent's Park--nursery-maids--wont do that; he's fit to marry any girl he might take a fancy to, sir, and make it impossible for any man to help him--for a fellow who marries beneath him," said Sir John, falling into the favourite channel of his own thoughts, "is lost--you can do no more for him. To be sure! I never thought of that, odd enough, till this moment; raise a _man_ from the ranks, all very well--but I defy you to raise his wife; that must be looked to directly, Sutherland--_don't_ you know where he is?" In answer to this question, the Colonel placed before his old comrade Roger's letter. Colonel Sutherland was not at all afraid of the nursery-maids or of young Musgrave's foolish falling in love. The Colonel, who had loved and been married at the natural season, wore no false spectacles to throw this hue upon everything, as did the unhappy old bachelor, hunted to death by his problematical heir, and able to think of nothing else. Certainly lads of twenty are not to be guaranteed against such accidents; but Roger, the Colonel felt very certain, was by no means possessed by that hyperbolical fiend who directed the thoughts of the unfortunate baronet to "nothing but ladies." Sir John read the letter with a little emotion, which he was evidently ashamed of; he held it in his hand for some little time after he had finished reading it, in order that he might be able to look perfectly unsympathetic and unconcerned. Then he put it down and got up hastily.