BLAYNE. Markyn told me that he congratulated him warily--one hand held out, t'other ready to guard. Gandy turned pink and said it was so. CURTISS. Poor old Caddy! They all do it. Who's she? Let's hear the details. BLAYNE. She's a girl--daughter of a Colonel Somebody. DOONE. Simla's stiff with Colonels' daughters. Be more explicit. BLAYNE. Wait a shake. What was her name? Thresomething. Three-- CURTISS. Stars, perhaps. Caddy knows that brand. BLAYNE. Threegan--Minnie Threegan. MACKESY. Threegan Isn't she a little bit of a girl with red hair? BLAYNE. 'Bout that--from what from what Markyn said. MACKESY. Then I've met her. She was at Lucknow last season. 'Owned a permanently juvenile Mamma, and danced damnably. I say, Jervoise, you knew the Threegans, didn't you? JERVOISE. (Civilian of twenty-five years' service, waking up from his doze.) Eh? What's that? Knew who? How? I thought I was at Home, confound you! MACKESY. The Threegan girl's engaged, so Blayne says. JERVOISE. (Slowly.) Engaged--en-gaged! Bless my soul! I'm getting an old man! Little Minnie Threegan engaged. It was only the other day I went home with them in the Surat--no, the Massilia--and she was crawling about on her hands and knees among the ayahs. 'Used to call me the “Tick Tack Sahib” because I showed her my watch. And that was in Sixty--Seven-no, Seventy. Good God, how time flies! I'm an old man. I remember when Threegan married Miss Derwent--daughter of old Hooky Derwent--but that was before your time. And so the little baby's engaged to have a little baby of her own! Who's the other fool? MACKESY. Gadsby of the Pink Hussars. JERVOISE. 'Never met him. Threegan lived in debt, married in debt, and 'll die in debt. 'Must be glad to get the girl off his hands. BLAYNE. Caddy has money--lucky devil. Place at Home, too. DOONE. He comes of first-class stock. 'Can't quite understand his being caught by a Colonel's daughter, and (looking cautiously round room.) Black Infantry at that! No offence to you, Blayne. BLAYNE. (Stiffly.) Not much, thaanks. CURTISS. (Quoting motto of Irregular Moguls.) “We are what we are,” eh, old man? But Gandy was such a superior animal as a rule. Why didn't he go Home and pick his wife there? MACKESY. They are all alike when they come to the turn into the straight. About thirty a man begins to get sick of living alone. CURTISS. And of the eternal muttony-chop in the morning. DOONE. It's a dead goat as a rule, but go on, Mackesy. MACKESY. If a man's once taken that way nothing will hold him, Do you remember Benoit of your service, Doone? They transferred him to Tharanda when his time came, and he married a platelayer's daughter, or something of that kind. She was the only female about the place. DONE. Yes, poor brute. That smashed Benoit's chances of promotion altogether. Mrs. Benoit used to ask “Was you gem' to the dance this evenin'?”