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"Young man," spoke Mr. Stirling with affected sternness, but a twinkling in his eye, "you take your half-pay, make tracks, enjoy yourself, and don't worry about a trifle of a dollar or two. If you happen to drop around this way about nine o'clock, I'll be glad of your company home." He slipped the money into Bart's pocket and playfully pushed him through the doorway. Bart's heart was pretty full.
Would the lady object to my lighting the pair of candles on the chimneypiece, to throw a further light upon the subject? No? Thank you, ma'am. Now, we look cheerful. Mr Inspector, in a dark-blue buttoned-up frock coat and pantaloons, presented a serviceable, half-pay, Royal Arms kind of appearance, as he applied his pocket handkerchief to his nose and bowed to the lady.
He began the world with a great hunger for money; the son of a half-pay officer, bred in a family, whose study was to make four-pence do as much as others made four-pence halfpenny do. But, when he had got money, he was very liberal. I presumed to animadvert on his eulogy on Garrick, in his Lives of the Poets.
They made an odd-looking couple dawn and the declining day, Spring and ripe Autumn, illusion and an elderly half-pay officer in a stock and a brown scratch wig upon a head that would harbour no more the dreams, the poignancies of youth.
A blessing it is to be acquainted with my worthy friend, little Major British; and heaven, sure, it was that put the Major into my head, when I heard of this awkward scrape of poor Fog's. The Major is on half-pay, and occupies a modest apartment au quatrieme, in the very hotel which Pogson had patronized at my suggestion; indeed, I had chosen it from Major British's own peculiar recommendation.
I suppose some day I shall be made a lieutenant, and then I do not expect to rise much higher; but a lieutenant is a gentleman by rank, and though the half-pay is not overwhelming, yet, as I have saved a little prize-money, I shall have enough to keep me till I am placed under the green sward.
He then made a warm and generous plea for the army, while treating upon the subject of public justice. Concerning proposed half-pay and commutation, he observed:
As long as Captain N retained his half-pay, he contrived to exist. In an evil hour he parted with this, and quickly trod the downhill path to ruin. And here I would remark that it is always a rash and hazardous step for any officer to part with his half-pay; although it is almost every day done, and generally followed by the same disastrous results.
So to Westminster, and there to Jervas's and was a little while with Jane, and so to London by coach and to the Coffee-house, where certain news of our peace made by Captain Allen with Argier, which is good news; and that the Dutch have sent part of their fleete round by Scotland; and resolve to pay off the rest half-pay, promising the rest in the Spring, hereby keeping their men.
"And yet you tell me, arms and ammunition are seized all over the land; that several old half-pay officers of the king have been arrested, and put under a sort of parole!" "Such things were talked of, certainly, though I question if they have yet been done. Luckily for yourself, under your present opinions at least, you are not on half-pay, even."
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