not to allow that she was a thorough gentlewoman, and she could do things
that lower other gentlewomen, without any loss of dignity. Thus
she was an admirable mimic, certainly in itself the least ladylike
condescension of humour. But when she mimicked, it was with so
tranquil a gravity, or so royal a good humour, that one could only
say, "What talents for society dear Mrs. Colonel has!" As she was
a gentlewoman emphatically, so the other colonel, the he-colonel,
was emphatically a gentleman; rather shy, but not cold; hating trouble
of every kind, pleased to seem a cipher in his own house. If the
sole study of Mrs. Colonel had been to make her husband comfortable,
she could not have succeeded better than by bringing friends about him
and then taking them off his hands. Colonel Poyntz, the he-colonel,
had seen, in his youth, actual service; but had retired from his
profession many years ago, shortly after his marriage. He was a
younger brother of one of the principal squires in the country;
inherited the house he lived in, with some other valuable property
in and about L----, from an uncle; was considered a good landlord; and
popular in Low Town, though he never interfered in its affairs. He was
punctiliously neat in his dress; a thin youthful figure, crowned with a
thick youthful wig. He never seemed to read anything but the newspapers
and the "Meteorological Journal:" was supposed to be the most weatherwise
man in all L----. He had another intellectual predilection,--whist;
but in that he had less reputation for wisdom. Perhaps it requires a
rarer combination of mental faculties to win an odd trick than to
divine a fall in the glass. For the rest, the he-colonel, many
years older than his wife, despite the thin youthful figure, was an
admirable aid-de-camp to the general in command, Mrs. Colonel; and
she could not have found one more obedient, more devoted, or more
proud of a distinguished chief.