Not being old
campaigners, their uniforms and accoutrements were in so much the finer
order, all bright, and looking span-new, and they themselves were a body
of handsome and stalwart young men; and it was pleasant to look at their
helmets, and red jackets and carbines, and steel scabbarded swords, and
gallant steeds,--all so martial in aspect,--and to know that they were
only play-soldiers, after all, and were never likely to do nor suffer any
warlike mischief. By and by their bugles sounded, and they trotted away,
wheeling over the ivy-grown stone bridge, and disappearing behind the
trees on the Milnethorpe road. Our host comes forth from the bar with a
bill, which he presents to an orderly-sergeant. He, the host, then tells
me that he himself once rode many years, a trooper, in this regiment, and
that all his comrades were larger men than himself. Yet Mr. Thomas White
is a good-sized man, and now, at all events, rather overweight for a
dragoon.
Yesterday came one of those bands of music that seem to itinerate
everywhere about the country. It consisted of a young woman who played
the harp, a bass-viol player, a fiddler, a flutist, and a bugler, besides
a little child, of whom, I suppose, the woman was the mother. They sat
down on a bench by the roadside, opposite the house, and played several
tunes, and by and by the waiter brought them a large pitcher of ale,
which they quaffed with apparent satisfaction; though they seemed to be
foreigners by their mustachios and sallow hue, and would perhaps have
preferred a vinous potation.
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