A lovely creature! and she looked like a queen in that brocade
dress in which we met her. I find all changed here; father and
mother both gone, the sister dying, if not dead, and none of the
family left, but the beauty! This has been a lucky expedition all
round, and promises to terminate better than Indian skirmishes in
general."
"Am I to suppose, sir, that you are about to desert your colours, in
the great corps of bachelors, and close the campaign with matrimony?"
"I, Tom Warley, turn Benedict! Faith, my dear boy, you little know
the corps you speak of, if you fancy any such thing. I do suppose
there are women in the colonies that a captain of Light Infantry need
not disdain; but they are not to be found up here, on a mountain
lake; or even down on the Dutch river where we are posted. It
is true, my uncle, the general, once did me the favor to choose a
wife for me in Yorkshire; but she had no beauty - and I would not
marry a princess, unless she were handsome."
"If handsome, you would marry a beggar?"
"Ay, these are the notions of an ensign! Love in a cottage - doors
- and windows - the old story, for the hundredth time. The 20th
- don't marry. We are not a marrying corps, my dear boy.
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