ned the room was empty. Wolf had gone.

The next morning there was a ripple of excitement at the adjutant's
office. A horse was missing from the band stables, and a musician from
the band barracks. At retreat that evening it was definitely settled
that Sergeant Wolf had deserted.

CHAPTER XIX.

IN CLOSE ARREST.

To use his own language, life had suddenly become vested with new charms
for Mr. Blake. He had found his conversational affinity. "For years,"
said he, "I have been like Pyramus, peeking and scratching at a wall for
Thisbe,--only my Thisbe was never there." But Pyramus Blake had found
his mate, he swore, and with huge delight he began devoting hours to
chat with Mrs. Whaling.

She was old enough to be his mother, though she thought the fact was
known to but few. She was as prosaic as he was fanciful, though it was
her aim to appear at ease in all literary topics. She knew little or
nothing of music or the languages, but it was her implicit conviction
that those by whom she was surrounded knew less; and she chiefly erred
in assuming to know that of which they frankly confessed their
ignorance. Aside from a consummate facility for blundering in French,
Mrs. Whaling possessed illimitable powers of distortion of her
mother-tongue, and this it was that so fascinated and enraptured Blake
on short acquaintance. He rushed in one morning to tell Mrs. Stannard
that nothing but jealousy could have prompted her and the other ladies
in concealing from him Mrs. Whaling's phenomenal gifts in this line, and
proclaiming her the sweetest sensation of his maturer years. If we have
failed thus far in pointing out some of the lingual peculiarities which
had won for this estimable lady the title of Mrs. Malaprop, it was
through the confidence we felt that so soon as she began to talk for
herself our efforts would be rendered unnecessary. Overweening interest
in other ladies has kept her somewhat in the background, a fact that
detracts at once from all hope of ever establishing the record of being
faithfully historic, since all who knew Mrs. Whaling are aware that
nobody could ever keep her in the background in any assemblage wherein
she was permitted to speak for herself. Perhaps it was therein that lay
one of her direst misfortunes, but she knew it not, poor lady, and like
too many of the rest of us, could never realize what was and what was
not best for her at the time. Will the day ever come when the author of
this w