days; and as he can't meet three Englishwomen without a
mallet in hand, love and croquet will come together."

"Alick is very good," went on Lady Temple, not answering, but arguing
with herself whether this opposition could be right. "Colonel Hammond
gave me such an account of him, so valuable and excellent among the men,
and doing all that is possible for their welfare, interesting himself
about their library, and the regimental school and all. The colonel
said he wished only that he was a little more easy and popular among the
young officers; but so many of his own standing were gone by the time
he joined again, that he lives almost too much to himself, reads a good
deal, and is most exemplary, but does not quite make his influence as
available as it might be."

"That's just it," cried Bessie, eagerly; "the boy is a lazy boy, and
wants shaking up, or he'll get savage and no good. Can't you see, by the
way he uses his poor little sister, what an awful don Captain Keith must
be to a schoolboy of an ensign? He must be taught toleration and hunted
into amiability, or he'll be the most terrible Turk by the time he is a
colonel; and you are the only person that can do it, dear Lady Temple."

Rachel did not much like this, but it was so prettily and playfully said
that the pleasing impression was quite predominant; and when Rachel took
leave, it was with a sense of vexation that a person whom she had begun
to esteem should be hard upon this bright engaging sister. Yet it might
be well if Fanny took note of the admission that he could be irritable
as well as stern, and sometimes mistaken in his judgments. What would
the Colonel say to all this? The Colonel--here he was coming back again
into her imagination. Another symptom!

The brother left the field entirely to his sister for the present; he
was a good deal occupied after his leave, and other officers being away,
he was detained at Avoncester, and meantime Bessie Keith took all hearts
by storm with her gay good humour and eager sympathy. By the end of the
first morning she had been to the stable with a swarm of boys, patted,
and learnt the names of all the ponies; she was on the warmest terms
with the young spaniel, that, to the Curtises' vexation, one of the
officers had given Conrade, and which was always getting into the
way; she had won Alison by telling her of Mr. Clare's recollections of
Ermine's remarkable beauty and intelligence, and charmed Ermine herself
by hi