only bachelors on whom the young ladies confer their affections; they
will take widowers without any difficulty; and a man so generally liked
as Major Newcome, with such a good character, with a private fortune of
his own, so chivalrous, generous, good-looking, eligible in a word, you
may be sure would have found a wife easily enough, had he any mind for
replacing the late Mrs. Casey.

The Colonel, as has been stated, had an Indian chum or companion, with
whom he shared his lodgings; and from many jocular remarks of this latter
gentleman (who loved good jokes, and uttered not a few) I could gather
that the honest widower Colonel Newcome had been often tempted to alter
his condition, and that the Indian ladies had tried numberless attacks
upon his bereaved heart, and devised endless schemes of carrying it by
assault, treason, or other mode of capture. Mrs. Casey (his defunct wife)
had overcome it by sheer pity and helplessness. He had found her so
friendless, that he took her into the vacant place, and installed her
there as he would have received a traveller into his bungalow. He divided
his meal with her, and made her welcome to his best. "I believe Tom
Newcome married her," sly Mr. Binnie used to say, "in order that he might
have permission to pay her milliner's bills;" and in this way he was
amply gratified until the day of her death. A feeble miniature of the
lady, with yellow ringlets and a guitar, hung over the mantelpiece of the
Colonel's bedchamber, where I have often seen that work of art; and
subsequently, when he and Mr. Binnie took a house, there was hung up in
the spare bedroom a companion portrait to the miniature--that of the
Colonel's predecessor, Jack Casey, who in life used to fling plates at
his Emma's head, and who perished from a fatal attachment to the bottle.
I am inclined to think that Colonel Newcome was not much cast down by the
loss of his wife, and that they lived but indifferently together. Clive
used to say in his artless way that his father scarcely ever mentioned