At sight of the Orderly, who thought proper to deliver the document into no other hands than mine, my mother-in-law cried, and my wife fainted on the spot. They had no notion of any distinctions in military service--a soldier was a soldier--and they imagined that, on the very morrow, I might be ordered abroad to a fresh Waterloo. They were unfortunately ignorant of that benevolent provision which absolved the militia from going out of the kingdom--“except in case of an invasion.” In vain I represented that we were “locals;” they had heard of local diseases, and thought there might be wounds of the same description. In vain I explained that we were not troops of the line;--they could see nothing to choose between being shot in a line, or in any other figure. I told them next that I was not obliged to serve myself; but they answered, “’twas so much the harder I should be obliged to serve any one else.” My being sent abroad, they said, would be the death of them; for they had witnessed, at Ramsgate, the embarkation of the Walcheren expedition, and too well remembered “the misery of the soldiers’ wives at seeing their husbands in _transports_!”
I told them that, at the very worst, if I _should_ be sent abroad, there was no reason why I should not return again; but they both declared, they never did, and never would believe in those “Returns of the Killed and Wounded.”
The discussion was in this stage when it was interrupted by another loud single knock at the door, a report equal in its effects on us to that of the memorable cannon-shot at Brussels; and before we could recover ourselves, a strapping Serjeant entered the parlour with a huge bow, or rather rain-bow, of party-coloured ribbons in his cap. He came, he said to offer a substitute for me; but I was prevented from reply by the indignant females asking him in the same breath, “Who and what did he think _could_ be a substitute for a son and a husband?”
The poor Serjeant looked foolish enough at this turn; but he was still more abashed when the two anxious Ladies began to cross-examine him on the length of his services abroad, and the number of his wounds, the campaigns of the Militia-man having been confined doubtless to Hounslow, and his bodily marks militant to the three stripes on his sleeve. Parrying these awkward questions he endeavoured to prevail upon me to see the proposed proxy, a fine young fellow, he assured me, of unusual stature; but I told him it was quite an indifferent point with me whether he was 6-feet-2 or 2-feet-6, in short whether he was as tall as the flag or “under the standard.”