between high-banked and rather
dirty cross-roads; and, if you will scramble up the hedge-row, may get
now and then peeps of undulated country landscape.

Moreover, you have free liberty to drop in any where to
"tiffin"--Burleigh being very Indianized, and a guest always welcome;
indeed, so Indianized is it, so populous in jaundiced cheek and ailing
livers, that you may openly assert, without fear of being misunderstood
(if you wish to vary your common phrase of loyalty), that Victoria sits
upon the "musnud" of Great Britain; you may order curry in the smallest
pot-house, and still be sure to get the rice well-cooked; you may call
your house-maid "ayah," without risk of warning for impertinence; you
may vent your wrath against indolent waiters in eloquence of "jaa,
soostee;" and, finally, you may go to the library, and besides the
advantage of the day-before-yesterday's Times, you may behold in bilious
presence an affable, but authoritative, old gentleman, who introduces
himself, "Sir, you see in me the hero of Puttymuddyfudgepoor."

You may even now see such an one, I say, and hear him too, if you will
but go to Burleigh; seeing he has by this time over-lived the year or so
whereof our tale discourses. He has, by dint of service, attained to the
dignity of General H.E.I.C.S., and--which he was still longer coming
to--the wisdom of being a communicative creature; though possibly, by a
natural reaction, at present he carries anti-secresy a little too far,
and verges on the gossiping extreme. But, at the time to which we must
look back to commence this right-instructive story, General Tracy was
still drinking "Hodgson's Pale" in India, was so taciturn as to be
considered almost dumb, and had not yet lifted up his yellow visage upon
Albion's white cliffs, nor taken up head-quarters in his final rest of
Burleigh-Singleton.

Nevertheless, with reference to quartering at Burleigh, a certain
long-neglected wife of his, Mrs. Tracy, had; and that for the period of
at least the twenty-one years preceding: how and wherefore I proceed to
tell.

A common case and common fate was that of Mrs. Tracy. She had married,
both early and hastily, a gallant lieutenant, John George Julian Tracy,
to wit, the military germ of our future general; their courtship and
acquaintance previous to matrimony extended over the not inconsiderable
space of three whole weeks--commencing with a country ball; and after
marriage, honey-moon inclusive, they