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Kilwangan regiment, of which Master Mick was the captain; and we had
a letter from Master Ulick at Trinity College, stating that the
University had also formed a regiment, in which he had the honour to
be a corporal. How I envied them both! especially that odious Mick
as I saw him in his laced scarlet coat, with a ribbon in his hat,
march off at the head of his men. He, the poor spiritless creature,
was a captain, and I nothing,--I who felt I had as much courage as
the Duke of Cumberland himself, and felt, too, that a red jacket
would mightily become me! My mother said I was too young to join the
new regiment; but the fact was, that it was she herself who was too
poor, for the cost of a new uniform would have swallowed up half her
year's income, and she would only have her boy appear in a way
suitable to his birth, riding the finest of racers, dressed in the
best of clothes, and keeping the genteelest of company.
Well, then, the whole country was alive with war's alarums, the
three kingdoms ringing with military music, and every man of merit
paying his devoirs at the court of Bellona, whilst poor I was
obliged to stay at home in my fustian jacket and sigh for fame in
secret. Mr. Mick came to and fro from the regiment, and brought
numerous of his comrades with him. Their costume and swaggering airs
filled me with grief, and Miss Nora's unvarying attentions to them
served to make me half wild. No one, however, thought of attributing
this sadness to the young lady's score, but rather to my
disappointment at not being allowed to join the military profession.
Once the officers of the Fencibles gave a grand ball at Kilwangan,
to which, as a matter of course, all the ladies of Castle Brady (and
a pretty ugly coachful they were) were invited. I knew to what
tortures the odious little flirt of a Nora would put me with her
eternal coquetries with the officers, and refused for a long time to
be one of the party to the ball. But she had a way of conquering me,
against which all resistance of mine was in vain. She vowed that
riding in a coach always made her ill. 'And how can I go to the
ball,' said she, 'unless you take me on Daisy behind you on the
pillion?' Daisy was a good blood-mare of my uncle's, and to such a
proposition I could not for my soul say no; so we rode in safety to
Kilwangan, and I felt myself as proud as any prince when she
promised to dance a country-dance with me.
When the dance was ended, the little ungrateful flirt informed me
that she had quite forgotten her engagement; she had actually danced
the set with an Englishman! I have endured torments in my life, but
none like that. She tried to make up for her neglect, but I would
not. Some of the prettiest girls there offered to console me, for I
was the best dancer in the room. I made one attempt, but was too
wretched to continue, and so remained alone all night in a state of
agony. I would have played, but I had no money; only the gold piece
that my mother bade me always keep in my purse as a gentleman
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