Chapter XXVIII A GENTLEMAN FROM THE WARS. I need hardly say that Sam was sorry when the two days which he had allowed himself for his visit were over. But that evening, when he mentioned the fact that he was going away in the morning, the Captain, Alice, and Jim, all pressed him so eagerly to stay another week, that he consented; the more as there was no earthly reason he knew of why he should go home. And the second morning from that on which he should have been at home, going out to the stable before breakfast, he saw his father come riding over the plain, and, going to meet him, found that he, too, meditated a visit to the Captain. "I thought you were come after me, father," said Sam. "By the bye, do you know that the Captain's daughter, Miss Alice, is come home?" "Indeed!" said the Major; "and what sort of a body is she?" "Oh, she is well enough. Something like Jim. Plays very well on the piano, and all that sort of thing, you know. Sings too." "Is she pretty?" asked the Major. "Oh, well, I suppose she is," said Sam. "Yes; I should say that a great many people would consider her pretty." They had arrived at the door, and the groom had taken the Major's horse, when Alice suddenly stepped out and confronted them. The Major had been prepared to see a pretty girl, but he was by no means prepared for such a radiant, lovely, blushing creature as stepped out of the darkness into the fresh morning to greet him, clothed in white, bareheaded, with "A single rose in her hair." As he told his wife, a few days after, he was struck "all of a heap;" and Sam heard him whisper to himself, "By Jove!" before he went up to Alice and spoke. "My dear young lady, you and I ought not to be strangers, for I recognise you from my recollections of your mother. Can you guess who I am?" "I recognise you from my recollections of your son, sir," said Alice, with a sly look at Sam; "I should say that you were Major Buckley." The Major laughed, and, taking her hand, carried it to his lips: a piece of old-fashioned courtesy she had never experienced before, and which won her heart amazingly. "Come, come, Buckley!" said the quiet voice of Captain Brentwood from the dark passage; "what are you at there with my daughter? I shall have to call out and fight some of you young fellows yet, I see." Alice went in past her father, stopping to give him a kiss, and disappeared into the breakfast-room. The Captain came out, and shook hands warmly with the Major, and said, "What do you think of her,--eh?" "I never saw such beauty before," answered the Major; "never, by Jove! I tell you what, Brentwood, I wish she could come out this season in London. Why, she might marry a duke."