CHAPTER IV.

THE DRAMATIC PERSONAGES GO ON A PIC-NIC, AND STUDY THE WAYS OF NEW BOSTON.

When the Lieutenant-Colonel awoke in the morning he did not feel much like going on a pic-nic. He had a slight ache in the top of his head, a huskiness in the throat, a woolliness on the tongue, a feverishness in the cuticle, and a crawling tremulousness in the muscles, as though the molecules of his flesh were separately alive and intertwining themselves. He drowsily called to mind a red-nosed old gentleman whom he had seen at a bar, trying in vain to gather up his change with shaky fingers, and at last exclaiming, "Curse the change!" and walking off hastily in evident mortification.

"Ah, Carter! you will come to that yet," thought the Lieutenant-Colonel.—"To be sure," he added after a moment, "this sobering one's self by main strength of will, as I did last night, is an extra trial, and enough to shake any man's system.—But how about breakfast and that confounded pic-nic?" was his next reflection. "Carter, temperance man as you are, you must take a cocktail, or you won't be able to eat a mouthful this morning."

He rang; ordered an eye-opener, stiff; swallowed it, and looked at his watch. Eight; never mind; he would wash and shave; then decide between breakfast and pic-nic. Thanks to his martial education he was a rapid dresser, and it still lacked a quarter of nine when he appeared in the dining saloon. He had time therefore to eat a mutton chop, but he only looked at it with a disgusted eye, his stomach being satisfied with a roll and a cup of coffee. In the outer hall he lighted a segar, but after smoking about an inch of it, threw the rest away. It was [Pg 45]decidedly one of his qualmish mornings, and he was glad to get a full breath of out of door air.

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"Is my hamper ready?" he said to one of the hall-boys.

"Sir?"

"My hamper, confound you;" repeated the Lieutenant-Colonel, who was more irritable than usual this morning. "The basket that I ordered last night. Go and ask the clerk."

"Yes, sir," said the boy when he returned. "It's all right, sir. There it is, sir, behind the door."

The omnibus, a little late of course, appeared about a quarter past nine. Besides Colburne it contained three ladies, two of about twenty-five and one of thirty-five, accompanied by an equal number 

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