ose house I had more than once passed a week in the shooting season.
Walter was an excellent fellow, and a perfect model of the class to
which he belonged. By no means unpolished in his manners, he had yet a
sort of plain frankness and _bonhomie_, which was peculiarly agreeable
and prepossessing. He was not a university man, nor had he received an
education of the highest order; spoke no language but his own with any
degree of correctness; neither played the fiddle, painted pictures, nor
wrote poetry. On the other hand, in all manly exercises he was a
proficient; shot, rode, walked, and danced to perfection; and the fresh
originality, and pleasant tone of his conversation, redeemed any
deficiency of reading or accomplishment. In personal appearance he was a
splendid fellow, nearly six feet in his boots, strongly, but, at the
same time, symmetrically built; although his size of limb and width of
shoulder rendered him, at six-and-twenty, rather what is called a fine
man, than a slender or elegant one. He had the true Anglo-Saxon
physiognomy, blue eyes, and light brown hair that waved, rather than
curled, round his broad handsome forehead. And, then, what a mustache
the fellow had! (He was officer in a crack yeomanry corps.) Not one of
the composite order, made up of pomatum and lamp-black, such as may be
seen sauntering down St James's Street on a spring afternoon, with
incipient guardsmen behind them--but worthy of an Italian painter or
Hungarian hussar; full, well-grown, and glossy. Who was the idiot who
first set afloat the notion--now become an established prejudice in
England--that mustaches were unseemly? To nine faces out of ten, they
are a most becoming addition, increasing physiognomical character,
almost giving it where there is none; relieving the monotony of broad
flat cheeks, and abridging the abomination of a long upper-lip.
Uncleanly, say you? Not a bit of it, if judiciously trimmed and trained.
What, Sir! are they not at least as proper looking as those foxy
thickets extending from jawbone to temple, which you yourself, each
morning of your life, take such pains to comb and curl into shape?

Delighted to meet Ashley, I dragged him off to the hotel, to introduce
him to M'Dermot and his sister. As a friend of mine they gave him a
cordial welcome, and we passed that day and the following ones together.
I soon, however, I must confess, began to repent a little having brought
my handsome friend into the society