Under Two Flags

ult to please with his Tops," sai

ts, and Russia-leather crickets, and turf backs, and Hythe boots, and waterproofs, and all manner of varnish things for dress, that none of the boys will do right unless you look after 'em yourself. But is it likely that he should know what a worry a Top's complexion is, and how hard it is to come right with all the Fast Brown polishing in the world? How should he guess what a piece of work it is to get 'em all of a color, and how like they are to come mottled, and how a'most sure they'll ten to one go off dark just as they're growing yellow, and put you to shame, let you do what you will to make 'em cut a shine o

ourished the tops that had been under discussion, and triumphant, as he invariably was, ran up the back stairs of hi

by Landseer, of a steeple-chaser by Harry Hall, one or two of Herring's hunters, and two or three fair women in crayons. The hangings of the room were silken and rose-colored, and a delicious confusion prevailed through it pell-mell; box-spurs, hunting-stirrups, cartridge cases, curb-chains, muzzle-loaders, hunting flasks, and white gauntlets, being mixed up with Paris novels, pink notes, point-lace ties, bracelets, and bouquets to be dispatched to various destinations, and velvet and silk bags for banknotes, cigars, or vesuvians, embroidered by feminine fingers and as useless as those pretty fingers themselves. On the softest of sofas, half dressed, and having half an hour before splashed like a waterdog out of the bath, as big as a small pond, in the dressing-chamber beyond was the Hon. Bertie himself, second son of Viscount Royallieu, known generally in the Brigades as "Beauty." The appellative,

s that Rake swung in his

you get that tawny color in the tiger'

rs of their fellows, and six times six of every other sort of boots that the cov

Polish don't come ni

they favor it much the most," laughed Cecil to himself,

e in this minu

t King stand

ted a little, he says; she always do, along of the engine noise, but the

water after the shaking before

s he di

d was between them; Rake considered that he knew more about horses than any other man living, and the other functi

uet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid Willon get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving mouths, and some of Wood's double mouths and Nelson gags; we want new ones. Mind that lever-snap breech-loader comes home in time. Look in at the Commission stables, a

he limbs indolently off his sofa, and surrendered himself to the martyrdom of cuirass and gorget, standing six feet one without his spurred jacks, but light-built and ful

with the crowd, and half dead for want of sodas and brandies, and from going a whole morning without one cigarette! Not to mention the inevitable apple-woman who invariably entangles herself between your horse's legs, and the certainty of your riding down somebody and having a summons about it the next day! If all that isn't the rough of the Service, I should like to know what is. Why the hottest day in the batteries, or the sharpest rush into Ghoorkhas or Bhoteahs, would be light work, compared!" murmured Cecil with the most plaintive pity for the hardships of life in the Hous

all perfume, point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B. C., and the crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of the window. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin on the moors after a royal, or in

e day very bad?" he asked with lan

newcomer, a young fellow of scarcely twenty, like himself in feature, though much smaller and slighter in build; a grac

nd-cheese, grew immediately intolerant of any wine less than 90s the dozen), said the Cecil cared for nothing longer than a fortnight, unless it was his horse, Forest King. It was very ungrateful in the Zu-Zu, since he cared fo

e weather, which was indeed pretty tolerable for an Englis

this as lazily as possible, shaking the white horsehair over his helmet, and drawing in deep d

In something the same spirit as the French countess accounted for her employing her valet to bring her her chocolate in bed-"Est ce que vous appelez cette chose-la un homme?"-Bertie had, on occasion, so wholly regarded servants as necessary furniture that he had gone through a love scene, with that handsome coquette Lady Regalia, totally oblivious of the p

e over his hands, and

's up

is brother's set; a cool, listless, reckless, thoroughbred, and impassive set, whose first canon was that you must lose your last thousand in the world without giving a sign that you winced, a

laid his hand gently on

h it! It's nothing ver

the boy a little huskily; he did not meet his bro

stle, and drew a meditativ

m I. So is everybody. The normal state of man

im I would send it him in the morning. The ponies were gone before I though

elf. Berkeley gave him a hurried, appealing glance. He was used to shift all his anxieties on to his elder brother, and to be helped by him under any difficulty. Cecil never all

rful luck in the world. I couldn't tell he'd go a crowner and have such cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie? I daren't ask the gover

ted on the lad's young, fair, womanish face, were

hack? I can pull you through, I dare say. Ah! by George, t

iligreed absurdities, and shook out all the banknotes there were in it. There were fives and tens enough to count up 45 pounds. He reac

e outside!" he said, with something that almost approached hurry in the utterance; so great was his terror of anything approaching a scene, and so eager was he to escape his brother's gratitude. The boy had taken the notes with delighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unprotesting readiness with which spoiled chil

u are!-how good

and shrugged

chains clashing and jingling; while, pressing his helmet on to his forehead and pulling the

myself money enough to take Willon and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow. If I shouldn't have kept enough to take my own ticket with!-that would be no end of a sell

and live with men who take the odds on most events in thousands; but the thing was done; he would not have undone it at the boy's loss, if he could; and Cecil, who never was worried by the loss of the most stupendous "crusher," and who made it a rule never to think of disagreeable inevitabilities two minutes together, shook his charger's bridle and cantered down Pic

for the Purifying of the Unwashed, and Prevention of their Suffocating Her Majesty's Brigades,'" murmured Cecil to the Earl of Broceliande, next him, as they sat down in their saddles with the rest of the "First Life," in front of St. Stephen's, with a hazy fog steaming round them, and a London mob crushing against their chargers' flanks, whi

utter famine for want of something to drink and something to smoke, were it only a glass of brown sherry and a little papelito

should ever be able to pay it, and he cared no more about either of these things than he cared about the Zu-Zu's throwing the half-guinea peaches into the river after a Richmond dinner, in the effort to hi

rn just when you wanted to rally the pack; it's the whip who carries you off to a division just when you've sat down to your turbot; it's the ten seconds by which you miss the train; it's the dust that gets in your eyes as you go down to Epsom; it's the pretty little rose note tha

indler, with as placid an indifference as if he had lost a toothpick; but he swore l

g half so bad as this; one day in a London mob beats a year's campaigning; what's charging

t, and dashed from the Houses of Parliament full trot with the rest of the escort on the return to the Palace; the afternoon sun breaking out with a brightene

ing for the sight of a cheroot approaching desperation. Unlimited sodas, three pipes smoked silently over Delphine Demirep's last novel, a bath well dashed with eau de cologne, and some glasses of Anisette after the fatigue-duty of unharnessing, restored him a little; but he was still

in what the woman called his handsome Spanish eyes, "I h

iamond-edition of a villa, prescribed Crème de Bouzy and Parfait Amour in succession, with a considera

worry he did not believe-he never let it come near him; and beyond a little difficulty sometimes in separating too many entangled rose-chins caught round him at the same time, and the annoyance o

r the wind when settling-day came, or the Jews appeared utterly impracticable; but, as a rule, things had always trimmed somehow, and though his debts were considerable, and he was literally as penniless as a man can be to stay in the Guards at all, he had never in any shape realized the want of money. He might not be able to raise a guinea to go toward that long-standing account, his army tailor's bill, and post obits had long ago forestalled the few hundred a year that, under his mother's settlements, would come to him at the Viscount's death; but Cecil had never known in his life what it was not to have a first-rate stud, not to liv

rfect of flirts, would never be "serious," and had nothing to be serious with; on which understanding he was allowed by the sex to have the run of their boudoirs and drawing-rooms, much

were the natural inheritance and concomitants of anybody born in a decent station, and endowed with a tolerable tact; such a matter-of-fact difficulty as not having gold enough to pay for his

from all the offered honors and threatened horrors, he courteously, but steadily declined them. Nor in more interesting adventures was he less happy in his coolness. When my Lord Regalia, who never knew when he was not wanted, came in inopportunely in a very tender scene of the young Guardsman's (then but a Cornet) with his handsome Countess, Cecil lifted his long lashes lazily, turning to him a face of the most plait-il? and innocent demureness-or consummate i

e same, and petted the sinner; and from then till now he had held his own with them; dashing through life very fast, as became

hand, Cecil never looked at him-never thought about him-knew, too, that he stood just as much behind the chairs of men whom the world accredited as million