"The connexion is quite recent, as I tell you," said I; "but I certainly don't mean to cut it. Hope to dine with him at headquarters, every day I'm disengaged." "Dine with him at headquarters?" replied Capsicum. "You'll do nothing of the kind, I can tell you that, sir. That is, you'll dine with him at my table; pretty often, too, I trust. Hope I shall frequently have the pleasure of seeing you both. But at his own table, if you're twenty years at headquarters, you won't dine with him once; take my word for that. John Barrymore wouldn't suffer it." Here was a blow! "Well, but that's a thing I can't understand," said I. "Well then, I must make you understand it," replied Capsicum. "You are going out on an appointment as clerk in John Barrymore's Department. Isn't it so?" I bowed assent. "Very well. That white chap does business in commissariat bills. When he gets a bill, he's dying to get the cash. Your Department pays the cash. Don't you see, my dear sir? It wouldn't do. It would be utterly at variance with all the rules of propriety, for any man in your Department to be on terms of intimacy with any man who does business in bills. Besides, it would be contrary to headquarters etiquette; everybody would talk about it. Now," added Capsicum, with a self-approving air, "now I've done my duty by John Barrymore. Noticed you were very thick. Thought I'd tell you, the first opportunity. Oh me! oh me!" (sighing, panting, gasping, pressing his hands on his stomach, and swaying his head from side to side,) "how very ill I do, feel! Such a horrid sensation! a don't-know-howishness--a sort of a come-overishness! The exertion of talking has made me quite bad again. Here, steward! steward! I must go on deck this instant." He turned ghastly green. "Yet," said I, hoping he would soon be better, "Mr Gingham, it seems, can dine with _you_, without any breach of propriety." "Yes, yes, to be sure he can," said Capsicum; "and so can you. Our Department don't finger the cash. Don't you see? That makes all the difference. Hope you'll both dine with me often." "Shall be very happy," replied I: "much obliged for your kind invitation. But still I can't understand. Mr Gingham has been at headquarters before, and knows headquarters. He also knows, I suppose, that your humble servant is a clerk of the military chest. Yet it was he himself who made the proposal that he and I should campaign together." "Can't explain that," said Capsicum; "must leave him to explain that as he can. Oh! here he comes." Gingham, before he turned in, had been on deck, to take a last look at the weather, to commune with the silent night, to scrutinise the horizon, to soliloquise with the clouds, and perhaps for some better and more solemn purposes: for Gingham, with all his oddities, was a man of religious principle, and of devotional feeling, and cared not who knew it. He now approached, and seated himself with us at the cabin table.