Frequently she would provide no dinner in order that we might be compelled to dine in public at a restaurant or a hotel, a thing she loved to do, and she would often send out for costly sweets and pastry, drink champagne (very moderately, I admit), and generally behave as though she were the wife of a man of means.

And she was an arrant, incorrigible, shameless flirt.

Well—­I do not know that a virtuous vulgar dowd is preferable to a wicked winsome witch of refined habits and person, and I should probably have gone quietly on to bankruptcy without any row or rupture, but for Burker.  Having been bred in a “gentle” home I naturally took the attitude of “as you please, my dear Dolores” and refrained from bullying when quiet indication of the inevitable end completely failed.  Whether she intended to act in a reasonable manner and show some wifely traits when my L250 of legacy and savings was quite dissipated I do not know.  Burker came before that consummation.

A number of gentlemen joined the Duri Volunteer Corps and formed a Mounted Infantry troop, and, though I am a good horseman, I was not competent to train the troop, as I had never enjoyed any experience of mounted military work of any kind.  So Sergeant Burker, late of the 54th Lancers, was transferred to Duri as Instructor of the Mounted Infantry Troop.  Naturally I did what I could to make him comfortable and, till his bungalow was furnished after a fashion, gave him our spare room.

Sergeant Barker was the ideal Cavalryman and the ideal breaker of hearts,—­hearts of the Mary-Ann and Eliza-Jane order.

He was a black-haired, blue-eyed Irishman with a heart as black as his hair, and language as blue as his eye—­a handsome, plausible, selfish, wicked devil with scarcely a virtue but pride and high courage.  I disliked him at first sight, and Dolores fell in love with him equally quickly, I am sure.

I don’t think he had a solitary gentlemanly instinct.

Being desirous of learning Mounted Infantry work, I attended all his drills, riding as troop-leader, and, between close attention to him and close study of the drill-book, did not let the gentlemen in the ranks know that, in the beginning, I knew as little about it as they did.

And an uncommonly good troop he soon made of it, too.

Of course it was excellent material, all good riders and good shots, and well horsed.

Burker and I were mounted by the R.H.A.  Battery here, and the three drills we held, weekly, were seasons of delight to a horse-lover like myself.

Now the horse I had was a high-spirited, powerful animal, and he possessed the trait, very common among horses, of hating to be pressed behind the saddle.  Turning to look behind while “sitting-easy” one day I rested my right hand on his back behind the saddle and he immediately lashed out furiously with both hind legs.  I did not realize for the moment what was upsetting him—­but quickly discovered that I had only to press his back to send his hoofs out like stones from a sling.  I then remembered other similar cases and that I had also read of this curious fact about horses—­something to do with pressure on the kidneys I believe.