be told so, and rather ignored the profession than otherwise. Perhaps he
had begun it early enough to have got tired of it; for he had now been
for some time on half-pay, and a brevet-major, after doing good service
in the Indian wars, and was not yet thirty-four. Molyneux had served in
the same light cavalry regiment as his subaltern, and there the
foundation was laid of their close alliance. It was not a very fair or
well-balanced one, being made up of implicit obedience, reliance, and
reverence on the one side, and a sort of protecting condescension on the
other--much like the old Roman relation between Client and Patron;
nevertheless it had outlasted many more sympathetic and better-looking
friendships.

They used to say of "The Cool Captain" (so he was always called off
parade), that "he could bring a boy to his bearings sooner than any man
in the army." Yet he was a favorite with them all. There was a regular
ovation among those "Godless horsemen" whenever he came into the Club,
or into their mess-rooms; they hung upon his simplest words with a
touchingly devout attention, and thought it was their own stupidity when
they could see nothing in them to laugh at or admire; they wrote off all
that they could remember of his sarcasms and repartees--generally
strangely travestied and spoiled by carriage--to unlucky comrades,
martyrized on far-off detachments, or vegetating with friends in the
country; the more ambitious, after much private practice, strove to
imitate his way of twisting his mustache as he stood before the fire,
though with some, to whom nature had been niggard of hirsute honors, it
was grasping a shadow and fighting with the air.

Certainly Molyneux never was so happy as in that society. Fond as he was
of his pretty wife, her influence was as nothing in the scale. She
complained of this, half in earnest, soon after they were married. The
fever of post-nuptial felicity was strong upon Harry just then, but he
did not attempt to deny the imputation. He only said, "My pet, I have
known him so much the longest!" I wonder, now, how many brides would
have admitted that somewhat unsatisfactory and illogical excuse? Fanny
Molyneux did; she was the best-natured little woman alive, and wise,
too, in her generation, for she never brought matters to a crisis, or
measured her strength against the "heavy-weight."

Indeed, they got on together extremely well. Whenever Keene happened to
be with them--which was not oft