"_Si, mi vida_," (yes, my life,) said Carlota, who was in the habit of bestowing lavishly on my grandfather the most endearing epithets in the Spanish language, some of them, perhaps, not particularly applicable--_niño de mi alma_, (child of my soul,) _luz de mis ojos_, (light of my eyes,) and the like; none of which appeared to have any more effect on the object of them than if they had been addressed to somebody else. Carlota rung the bell, which nobody answered. "Nurse is busy with de _niña_," she said, when nobody answered it; "I go myself to de _cocina_," (kitchen,)--she spoke English as yet but imperfectly. "There's one comfort in delay," said the Major; "'tis better to boil a ham too much than too little--and yet I shouldn't like it overdone either." Here they were alarmed by an exclamation from Carlota. "_Ah Dios! Caramba! Ven, ven, mi niño!_" cried she from the kitchen. The Major and Owen hastened to the kitchen, which was so close at hand that the smell of the dinner sometimes anticipated its appearance in the dining-room. Mrs Bags, the new cook, was seated before the fire. On the table beside her was an empty champagne bottle, the fellow to which protruded its neck from a pail in one corner, where the Major had put it to cool; and another bottle of more robust build, about half-full, was also beside her. The countenance of Mrs Bags wore a pleasant and satisfied, though not very intelligent smile, as she gazed steadfastly on the ham that was roasting on a spit before the fire--at least one side of it was done quite black, while the other oozed with warm greese; for the machinery which should have turned it was not in motion. "_Caramba!_" exclaimed Carlota, with uplifted hands. "_Que picarilla!_"--(What a knave of a woman!) "Gracious heavens!" said my grandfather, "she's roasting it! Who ever heard of a roast ham?" "A many years," remarked Mrs Bags, without turning her head, and still smiling pleasantly, "have I lived in gentlemen's families--" Here this fragment of autobiography was terminated by a hiccup. "And the champagne bottle is empty," said Owen, handling it. "A nice sort of cook this of yours, Major. She seems to have constituted herself butler, too." My grandfather advanced and lifted the other bottle to his nose. "'Tis the old rum," he ejaculated with a groan. "But if the woman has drunk all this 'twill be the death of her. Bags," he called, "come here." The spouse of Mrs Bags emerged from a sort of scullery behind the kitchen--a tall bony man, of an ugliness quite remarkable, and with a very red face. He was better known by his comrades as Tongs, in allusion probably to personal peculiarities; for the length of his legs, the width of his bony hips, and the smallness of his head, gave him some distant resemblance to that article of domestic ironmongery; but as his wife called herself Mrs Bags, and he was entered in the regimental books by that name, it was probably his real appellation.