CURTISS. Stars, perhaps. Gaddy knows _that_ brand.
BLAYNE. Threegan--Minnie Threegan.
MACKESY. Threegan! Isn't she a little bit of a girl with red hair?
BLAYNE. 'Bout that--from what Markyn said.
MACKESY. Then I've met her. She was at Lucknow last season. 'Owned a
permanently juvenile Mamma, and danced damnably. I say, Jervoise, you
knew the Threegans, didn't you?
JERVOISE. (_Civilian of twenty-five years' service, waking up from
his doze_.) Eh? What's that? Knew who? How? I thought I was at Home,
confound you!
MACKESY. The Threegan girl's engaged, so Blayne says.
JERVOISE. (_Slowly_.) Engaged--engaged! Bless my soul! I'm getting an
old man! Little Minnie Threegan engaged. It was only the other day I
went home with them in the _Surat_--no, the _Massilia_--and she was
crawling about on her hands and knees among the _ayahs_. 'Used to call
me the '_Tick Tack Sahib_' because I showed her my watch. And that was
in Sixty-seven--no, Seventy. Good God, how time flies! I'm an old man.
I remember when Threegan married Miss Derwent--daughter of old Hooky
Derwent--but that was before your time. And so the little baby's engaged
to have a little baby of her own! Who's the other fool?
MACKESY. Gadsby of the Pink Hussars.
JERVOISE. 'Never met him. Threegan lived in debt, married in debt,
and'll die in debt. 'Must be glad to get the girl off his hands.
BLAYNE. Gaddy has money--lucky devil. Place at Home, too.
DOONE. He comes of first-class stock. 'Can't quite understand his being
caught by a Colonel's daughter, and (_looking cautiously round room_)
Black Infantry at that! No offence to you, Blayne.
BLAYNE. (_Stiffly_.) Not much, tha-anks.
CURTISS. (_Quoting motto of Irregular Moguls_.) 'We are what we are,'
eh, old man? But Gaddy was such a superior animal as a rule. Why didn't
he go Home and pick his wife there?
MACKESY. They are all alike when they come to the turn into the
straight. About thirty a man begins to get sick of living alone--
CURTISS. And of the eternal muttony-chop in the morning.
DOONE. It's dead goat as a rule, but go on, Mackesy.
MACKESY. If a man's once taken that way nothing will hold him. Do you
remember Benoit of your service, Doone? They transferred him to Tharanda
when his time came, and he married a platelayer's daughter, or something
of that kind. She was the only female about the place.
DOONE. Yes, poor brute. That smashed Benoit's chances of promotion
altogether. Mrs. Benoit used to ask: 'Was you goin' to the dance this
evenin'?'
CURTISS. Hang it all! Gaddy hasn't married beneath him. There's no
tar-brush in the family, I suppose.
JERVOISE. Tar-brush! Not an anna. You young fellows talk as though
the man was doing the girl an honour in marrying her. You're all too
conceited--nothing's good enough for you.
BLAYNE. Not even an empty Club, a dam' bad dinner at the Judge's, and
a Station as sickly as a hospital. You're quite right. We're a set of
Sybarites.