"Nonsense!" said Gingham, looking very serious, and speaking quite in a sharp and peremptory tone--"nonsense!" Then softening a little, "Rencontres, my dear sir? Rencontres? Nothing of the kind. Rencontres? You talk like a militia officer. Rencontres? You'll soon dismiss all that kind of thing from your thoughts, after you have seen two or three rencontres with the French. Rencontres? No, no; no field of forty footsteps at headquarters. Rencontres? It would be a perfect absurdity, where men have the chance of being shot gratis every day of their lives, without going out of the way for it. Rencontres? No; I did not mean that. What I meant to say was this: you would infallibly be made a general butt. Rencontres? Why, Mr Y--, if you show any nonsense of that sort, you'll be tormented to death. Rencontres? Oh, what lots of fun they'll take out of you! Meanwhile, think yourself fortunate that you are now getting a seasoning. I am truly glad, for your sake, that you have had the opportunity here at Falmouth, and will have the opportunity on your passage out, of seeing something of military men and modes before you join. You may, and probably will, be dubbed, on your arrival, a Johnny Newcome. But, at any rate, you will not be a Johnny Raw." Gingham closed the conference by walking to the other end of the room, and steadfastly contemplating his own beautiful physiognomy in the glass. During our conversation, his hand had frequently visited his nose. He now stood opposite the mirror, slewing his head first this way, then that, and at length broke silence:-- "Well, I was not aware of it; but I do think that my nose is a little crooked." "I presume," said I, "you have no sisters?" "I have none," replied Gingham. "Nor are you, I apprehend, a married man?" "There, alas, you are right again," said Gingham; "but what has that to do with it?" "Your wife, or your sisters, if you had any, would have told you that you have a very crooked nose." "Well, but," said Gingham, "there's my mother. My dear mother never told me that my nose was crooked." "Your mother, probably, is totally unconscious of the fact; and, should she hear any one else assert such a thing, would deny it most strenuously." "Nay, but," said Gingham, "though I have neither sister nor wife, and supposing my dear mother to be blind to my personal defects, I have--in short, Mr Y--, before I left London, I took a tender leave of her whom I hope to persuade, on my next return from the Peninsula, to accept the hand and the heart of a Gingham. SHE did not tell me that my nose was crooked. She mentioned various obstacles to our union; but she never mentioned _that_." "Then," said I, "depend upon it, she means to have you. And depend upon this, too; she will tell you your nose is crooked when you have made her Mrs Gingham, if she does not tell you so before." "As to my walking sideways," said Gingham, "that's a palpable fiction."