CHAPTER XIX.

Which returns to the Long Cornet, and shows how the Beauty of that Gentleman was spoilt.

IN the meantime, Mr. Cornet Drawlincourt of the dragoons was making the best of his way to Dum-Dum, along the very dustiest and roughest road that ever destroyed the equilibrium of a traveller's temper. He had been invited to dine at the artillery mess by a young cadet in the same ship with whom he had recently come from Madras, and being naturally disposed to dine anywhere else rather than at home, he had gladly accepted the invitation. "That dog, Pultuney, won't be there either," he said to himself. "I know he won'thang the puppy! I'm deyvelish glad of that;" and, as he thus soliliquized, some very pleasant fancies, the nature of which the reader will easily divine, tickled him amazingly, and he began to laugh, though there was nobody near him to admire the whiteness of his teeth.

He reached Dum-Dum about ten minutes before

the dinner hour, and as he swaggered up the steps of the mess verandah, he stumbled upon Julian Jenks.

"Ah! Drawlincourt," said that good-natured young gentleman-" quite recovered since your trip to sea?—glad to hear it—come to give me the honour of your—"

"No-no-vastly indebted to you, but I am come to dine with Griffin of your corps. In the library, you say, thank you, Mr. Jenks. Your friend what's-his-name is not here?"

"If you mean Pultuney," said Jenks, turning away, “he is not here," and the long cornet passed on to the library.

Nothing very particular, worthy of narration occurred during dinner-time; it was a "public night," and several guests were present at the messtable. Amongst these were four or five Queen's officers, not very long arrived from England, and as they sat somewhere in Drawlincourt's neighbourhood, the cornet contrived to scrape an acquaintance with them, and in a little time was commenced a very instructive conversation, chiefly relating to "Jones of ours," "Simpkins of yours," and "Watkin of the 110th;" in this they all seemed especially interested, interlarding their personal talk with a great variety of quaint anecdotes, and particularly when the long cornet was the speaker, seasoning the whole with a choice display of blasphemy, very pleasant and refreshing to hear.

Mr. Drawlincourt, as the sagacious reader will have long ago discovered, had vast pretensions to gentility, and little else; but it was not so with his brother officers, who, though somewhat conceited, were men of decided respectability. They were gentlemen; but unfortunately they had come out to India with no very exalted notion of the Indian army, and had not quite got over the very erroneous opinions which they had imbibed at home, regarding the respective merits of the Queen's and Company's military establishments, and the services rendered by each to the country.

And it so happened, upon the momentous evening which our history has now reached, that about an hour after the cloth had been removed, some incidental allusion to a recent military transaction, brought the respective claims of the royal and the East-Indian army upon the tapis, as a subject of discussion. It is a subject always much better avoided, especially at the mess-table, but on the present occasion it was unfortunately introduced.

"Yes, yes, of course," said the long cornet, who having a weak head, was a little disordered by the beer and wine he had drunk-" of course we all know that our army has done every d-d thingof course it has, who doubts it?"

Why, to tell you the truth, I do," said a gentlemanly young artilleryman, who was sitting nearly opposite to Drawlincourt, "the history of India unfolds a very different story."

"Nay,” said a Queen's officer, mildly, "I do not think that-look at our victories under Wellesley and Lake."

"Yes," added the cornet, "and under the Duke of Wellington, too."

The young artillery officer smiled.

"I think," said the king's officer, who had before spoken, and whose name was Captain Thornhill, "that if you look into the accounts of the greater number of Indian sieges, you will find that our men have been always in the advance-that they have always composed the greater and the foremost portion of all storming parties, and that almost every army of Queen's and Company's troops together, has been led on to victory by a Queen's general."

"That has always been our misfortune, not our fault," said the young artillery officer. "Europeans, when acting with natives, have always preceded them; but the Europeans have not always been of your service, nor has the native army always had European support. It is but just to let us have our fair share of the honour, for ever since the Company has had any military power in India, our army has co-operated with yours in every engagement, wherein you have been concerned, and won a vast number of battles beside, with which you have had nothing to do."

"I cant see that at all," said the long cornet, emptying off a bumper of claret, "you will never

persuade me that those black deyvils have any idearr of fighting. I could give half a dozen of 'em a most infernal thrashing any day I like that I could. They fight! the black deyvils-not they." "And yet they have fought; and well too," said the young artilleryman, smiling at the national nerosity of the long dragoon.

ge

"I should like to know when and where, deyvelishly," returned the cornet, "I should like to see the black fellow, who knows how to fight-upon my soul, I should-deyvelish much. What have they done? I should like to know, sir."

"I will tell you," returned Julian Jenks, who had taken possession of a vacant seat opposite the cornet and next to the young officer, who had been defending the Company's army, "I will tell you— these black devils won the battle of Cuddalore, when the European army was put to confusionthese black devils took Agra-did all but take Bhurtpore, when the Europeans could do nothing against it, in Lord Lake's time."

"Ha ha! I have you there," interrupted the cornet, "it was Lord Combermere-that I know very well, who went against Bhurtpore and took it, for I heard him say so at a dinner-party in England. Ha ha! that's deyvelish good."

"You are very learned in history, I have no doubt," said Mr. Jenks; "but, perhaps, you will allow me to observe that Lord Lake tried to take Bhurtpore, but did not; and that Lord Comber