Drawn from life - 1871 Author:Archibald Forbes Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 25 CHAPTER III. nnHE embarkation of a detachment so -- small as that of which a draft usually consists is not an affair of so much magnitude or importance ... more »as when a whole regiment, omnibus impedimentis, takes ship for foreign service; but nevertheless Hector saw enough to interest him greatly, and in some measure to distract his mind from the desponding thoughts which not unnaturally had possession of him. On arriving at the railway-station, the first order was to lay aside arms and assist in the piling of the baggage upon the trucks which were prepared for its reception. This operation was a somewhat complicated one, by reason of the fact that two married women, Mrs. Malony and Mrs. Macgregor, whose acquaintance Hector had previously made at the depot, were to accompany the detachment. These good ladies had never been abroad before, although there were few barracks in the United Kingdom with the married quarters of which they were not acquainted ; and they evinced a strong propensity to take with them as many mementoes as possible of their native shores. Mrs. Macgregor, honest woman, had manifested that concentrativeness which is a feature in the character of the nation to which, as her name betokened, she belonged. She had packed up in a great piece of canvas sheeting a certain feather bed, which, as an heirloom from her remote ancestors, she was fond of boasting of and parading ostentatiously, when the other married women of the regiment were fain to sew two regimental palliasse covers together and get them filled with straw. In the capacious bosom of this family relic she had stowed a variety of minor articles, the chief among which were a washhand-jug of some primeval china, an antiquated whisky-bottle— which, trust Mrs. Macgregor, was quite empty—a cradle, sundry vo...« less