"But as I was saying, we were ordered to Loughrea after being fifteen
months in detachments about Birr, Tullamore, Kilbeggan, and all that
country; the change was indeed a delightful one, and we soon found
ourselves the centre of the most marked and determined civilities. I told
you they were wise people in the west; this was their calculation: the
line--ours was the Roscommon militia--are here to-day, there to-morrow;
they may be flirting in Tralee this week, and fighting on the Tagus the
next; not that there was any fighting there in those times, but then there
was always Nova Scotia and St. John's, and a hundred other places that a
Galway young lady knew nothing about, except that people never came back
from them. Now, what good, what use was there in falling in love with them?
Mere transitory and passing pleasure that was. But as for us: there we
were; if not in Kilkenny we were in Cork. Safe out and come again; no
getting away under pretence of foreign service; no excuse for not marrying
by any cruel pictures of the colonies, where they make spatch-cocks of the
officers' wives and scrape their infant families to death with a small
tooth-comb. In a word, my dear O'Mealey, we were at a high premium; and
even O'Shaughnessy, with his red head and the legs you see, had his
admirers. There now, don't be angry, Dan; the men, at least, were mighty
partial to you.

"Loughrea, if it was a pleasant, was a very expensive place. White gloves
and car hire,--there wasn't a chaise in the town,--short whist, too (God
forgive me if I wrong them, but I wonder were they honest), cost money; and
as our popularity rose, our purses fell; till at length, when the one was
at the flood, the other was something very like low water.

"Now, the Roscommon was a beautiful corps; no petty jealousies, no little
squabbling among the officers, no small spleen between the major's wife
and the paymaster's sister,--all was amiable, kind, brotherly, and