"I shall be quite angry if you talk about trouble, my dear Cecil," said the kind-hearted hostess. "Here have Horatio and I been puzzling our brains to find out something or other to enliven the house in this wretched weather; and just at the very time when we were most at a loss for amusement and occupation, this marriage of yours happens to afford us both. You don't know what it is, my dear, to have nine marriageable girls in a house, with only three unmarried men, and those three more listless, and lazy, and stupid than words can describe, or you wouldn't talk of giving trouble. All I dread is the reaction which we shall suffer when it's all over, and you and Mr. O'Boyneville have gone to Ireland." Thus it happened, that although it had been promised that the wedding should be a private one, the programme of the day grew to an alarming extent before the day arrived. The officers who had assisted at the archery meeting were invited to the breakfast, much to the delight of the nine young ladies, and much to the aggravation of the three listless young gentlemen, who gave utterance to the most crushing sarcasms when the martial visitors were alluded to, and affected to consider the profession of arms entirely incompatible with the faintest scintillation of intelligence, or the smallest modicum of education. "Yes," drawled the most listless of the listless ones, "Captain Harduppe is a remarkably fine fellow. Of course it's a great merit in a man to be six foot two and three-quarters, and a merit which society is bound to recognise. But did any body ever hear the captain read? or did any body ever see the captain write? It's my belief that the greatest pull the Jew-bill-discounters have over their military customers lies in the fact that they witness the agonies which the martial mind experiences in the process of signing its name; and it's also my belief that when a cavalry officer takes up the _Times_ and throws it down again, exclaiming, 'Haw! nothing in the papaws to-day, I s'ppose,' he does so simply because he can't read." Of course Mr. O'Boyneville, happening to overhear some such speech as this, arose in his might and crushed the scorner, proving that from the days of Cæsar, whom in the excitement of argument he called "Sayzer," to the time of the conqueror of Waterloo, soldiers had been even more renowned for the power of their intellect than for the prowess of their arms, and that the helmet and buckler of Minerva were only typical of the fact that from the earliest period of history, wisdom and valour had gone hand-in-hand. Through the misty November morning went the train of carriages to the little church where Mr. O'Boyneville awaited his bride, after spending the night on loop-line and at junction, and after making a hurried toilet at the village inn.