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GENERAL BOUNCE


[Illustration: "'Where have you been all day? You promised to
drive me out--you know you did!'"

_Page 77_]


GENERAL BOUNCE

or

The Lady and the Locusts

by

G. J. WHYTE-MELVILLE

Author of "Katerfelto," "The Interpreter," "Market Harborough," etc.

Illustrated by Frances E. Ewan







London
Ward, Lock & Co., Limited
New York and Melbourne




PREFACE


Where the rose blushes in the garden, there will the bee and the
butterfly be found, humming and fluttering around. So is it in the
world; the fair girl, whose sweetness is enhanced by the fictitious
advantages of wealth and position, will ever have lovers and admirers
enough and to spare.

Burns was no bad judge of human nature; and he has a stanza on this
subject, combining the reflection of the philosopher with the _canny_
discrimination of the Scot.

    "Away with your follies of beauty's alarms,
    The _slender_ bit beauty you clasp in your arms;
    But gi'e me the lass that has acres of charms,
    Oh, gi'e me the lass with the _weel-plenished_ farms."

Should the following pages afford such attractive young ladies matter
for a few moments' reflection, the author will not have written in
vain.

May he hope they will choose well and wisely; and that the withered
rose, when she has lost her fragrance, may be fondly prized and gently
tended by the hand that plucked her in her dewy morning prime.




    CONTENTS


      CHAP.                                 PAGE

         I. My Cousin                          9

        II. The Abigail                       26

       III. The Handsome Governess            41

        IV. "Libitina"                        58

         V. Uncle Baldwin                     72

        VI. The Blind Boy                     85

       VII. Boot and Saddle                  101

      VIII. The Ball                         116

        IX. Want                             130

         X. Superfluity                      146

        XI. Campaigning Abroad               161

       XII. Campaigning at Home              177

      XIII. The World                        194

       XIV. To Persons about to Marry        204

        XV. Penelope and her Suitors         212

       XVI. Forgery                          225

      XVII. Club Law                         236

     XVIII. The Strictest Confidence         247

       XIX. Dispatches                       259

        XX. Dawn in the East                 276

       XXI. Hospital                         292

      XXII. The Widow                        303

     XXIII. "Stop her"                       309

      XXIV. King Crack                       323

       XXV. "Dulce Domum"                    333

      XXVI. "Eudaemon"                       347

     XXVII. Flood and Field                  360

    XXVIII. "The Sad Sea Wave"               374




GENERAL BOUNCE

_OR, THE LADY AND THE LOCUSTS_




CHAPTER I

MY COUSIN

     AN ENGLISHMAN'S HOLIDAY--ST. SWITHIN'S IN A CALM--THE
     MERCHANT'S AMBITION--"MON BEAU COUSIN"--CASTLES IN THE AIR--A
     LIVELY CRAFT--"HAIRBLOWER" AND HIS COLD BATH


Much as we think of ourselves, and with all our boasted civilisation,
we Anglo-Saxons are but a half-barbarian race after all. Nomadic,
decidedly nomadic in our tastes, feelings, and pursuits, it is but the
moisture of our climate that keeps us in our own houses at all, and
like our Scandinavian ancestors (for in turf parlance we have several
crosses of the old Norse blood in our veins), we delight
periodically--that is, whenever we have a fortnight's dry weather--to
migrate from our dwellings, and peopling the whole of our own
sea-board, push our invading hordes over the greater part of Europe,
nor refrain from thrusting our outposts even into the heart of Asia,
till the astonished Mussulman, aghast at our vagaries, strokes his
placid beard, and with a blessing on his Prophet that he is not as we
are, soothes his disgust with a sentiment, so often repeated that in
the East it has become a proverb--viz. that "There is one devil, and
there are many devils; but there is _no_ devil like a Frank in a round
hat!"

It was but last autumn that, stepping painfully into our tailor's
shop--for, alas! a course of London dinners cannot be persisted in,
season after season, without producing a decided tendency to gout in
the extremities--hobbling, then, into our tailor's warehouse, as he
calls it, we were measured by an unfledged jackanapes, whose voice we
had previously heard warning his brother fractions that "an old gent
was a waitin' inside," instead of that spruce foreman who, for more
years than