Poor Dechamps, if your place is worth
nothing, she at least is a treasure above all price.
"Presently Elliott sais, 'By-the-by, Dechamps, have you heard we are
ordered to Corfu, and embark immediately?'
"Dear me, what magic there is in a word. Sometimes it discloses in
painful distinctness the past, at others it reveals a prophetic page
of the future; who would ever suppose there was anything in that
little insignificant word to occasion a thought, unless it was whether
it is pronounced Corfoo or Corfew, and it's so little consequence
which, I always give it the go by and say Ionian Isles.
"But it startled Dechamps. He had hoped before he left the army to
have been ordered there, and from thence to have visited the classic
coasts of Greece. Alas, that vision has gone, and there is a slight
sigh of regret, for possession seldom equals expectation, and always
cloys. He can never more see his regiment, they have parted for ever.
Time and distance have softened some of the rougher features of
military life. He thinks of the joyous days of youth, the varied
scenes of life, his profession exposed to his view, and the friends he
has left behind him. The service he thinks not so intolerable after
all, and though regimental society is certainly not what he should
choose, especially as a married man, yet, except in a rollicking
corps, it may at least negatively be said to be 'not bad.
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