Sir John scratched his head. "That would be a bore," he admitted; "at all events, let's wait--we'll say a week; a recruit can't be off to the end of the world in that time. Then there's a little leisure to think; and I say, Sutherland, keep your interest for your own occasions, old fellow--you may want it yet for one of those everlasting boys of yours. I've a strong confidence Tom will take you in, and go for a soldier like the rest of his race. What would you make the boy a parson for? A Scotch parson too!--whom nobody can be of the least benefit to. Wait a little--he'll change his mind, that fellow will, or he's not the boy I took him for. Let's join the--hum--I forgot--no ladies to join," he muttered, in as low a tone as he could drop his voice to so suddenly. "Play chess still, Sutherland?--let's try a game." CHAPTER XIV. Sir John Armitage found Milnehill an exceedingly agreeable habitation. He fell into the routine of the Colonel's habits as a man long accustomed to a life and duties similar to those of his host only could have done. Day by day he recovered of his querulousness and invalidism. He even forgot the dreaded heir who had driven him from his new inheritance, and began to be able to speak on ordinary subjects without much allusion to the dreadful subject of marriage, and his own perplexities in respect to it. Then Sir John, when once delivered from himself, was a little of a humorist, and enjoyed the peculiarities of the society in which he found himself. Numberless old Indian officers, members of the Civil service, families who, without being of that origin, had two or three sons in our oriental empire, and people more or less connected with India, were to be found in the neighbourhood. Indeed, with the mixture of a clergyman or two, a resident landed proprietor, linked to the community by means of a son in the B.N.I., or a daughter married in Calcutta, and one or two stray lawyers from Edinburgh--this formed the whole of Colonel Sutherland's society, and no small part of the general society of the neighbourhood.