THE BRUSHWOOD BOY
"You can make your mind easy, sir. I have n't one."
"Not in all these years?" said the mother.
"I had n't time, mummy. They keep a man pretty busy, these days, in the service, and most of our mess are unmarried, too."
"But you must have met hundreds in society—at balls, and so on?"
"I'm like the Tenth, mummy: I don't dance."
"Don't dance! What have you been doing with yourself, then—backing other men's bills?" said the father.
"Oh, yes; I 've done a little of that too; but you see, as things are now, a man has all his work cut out for him to keep abreast of his profession, and my days were always too full to let me lark about half the night."
"Hmm!"—suspiciously.
"It 's never too late to learn. We ought to give some kind of house warming for the people about, now you 've come back. Unless you want to go straight up to town, dear?"
"No. I don't want anything better than this. Let 's sit still and enjoy ourselves. I suppose there will be something for me to ride if I look for it?"
"Seeing I 've been kept down to the old brown pair for the last six weeks because all the others were being got ready for Master Georgie, I should say there might be," the father chuckled. "They 're reminding me in a hundred ways that I must take the second place now."
"Brutes!"
[413]
