"
"My mother doesn't bother about it."
"I wish she did," said Cecil. "If she had gone on like mine, you
would have been ever so much better than I."
"No, I should have been bored and bothered into being regularly good-
for-nothing. You don't know what she's really like. She's nicer
than anyone—-as jolly as any fellow, and yet a lady all over."
"I know that," said Cecil; "she was uncommonly jolly to me at Eton,
and I know my mother and she will get on like a house on fire. We're
too old to have a scrimmage about them like disgusting little lower
boys," he added, seeing Jock still bristling in defence of Mother
Carey.
This produced a smile, and he went on—-
"Look here, Skipjack, we will be fellow-soldiers every way. My Uncle
James can do anything at the Horse Guards, and he shall have us set
down for the same regiment. I'll tell him you are my good
influence."
"But I've been just the other way."
"Oh, but you will be-—a year or two will show it. Which shall it be?
Do you go in for cavalry or infantry? I like cavalry, but he's all
for the other."
Jock was wearied enough not to have much contribution to make to the
conversation, and he thus left Cecil such a fair field as he seldom
enjoyed for Uncle James's Indian and Crimean campaigns, and for the
comparative merits of the regiments his nephew had beheld at reviews.
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