"Saw you at Cadiz," said Capsicum. "Think I saw you at Madrid." "I saw you at Canton," coolly replied Gingham. Capsicum looked a little queer. "At Canton?" said Capsicum. "Saw me at Canton? Did you, though? Come, come, now you're joking, you know. Did you though, really? How was I dressed?" "You were dressed like what you were; not exactly as you are dressed now. You had a long, taper pigtail, reaching down to your heels; no hair on your head besides. You had slippers, scarlet and gold, turned up at the toes. You carried a fan; and didn't I once or twice see you followed by a fellow who carried a parasol over your head at the top of a long pole? You had--" "I'll tell you what," said Capsicum precipitately; "I'm a Christian for all that, and my father was an Englishman. True, I was bred at Canton; but I wasn't born there. Born at Macao. My mother--" Here, in a voice which ran through all the notes of the gamut, not however in due order, but like the cat's minuet, high and low alternately, Gingham struck up a strange outlandish sort of utterance, whether talking or singing I could not tell; but, if singing, it was the rummest song I ever heard--a jumping, dissonant compound of bass and treble. Capsicum responded in a similar fugue. The two funny rogues were speaking Chinese! The discovery of Capsicum's semi-gentile extraction tickled my fancy not a little. "So," said Capsicum to Gingham, "you and Johnny intend to make a joint concern of it at headquarters." "That's how we've settled it," replied Gingham. "Can't be," said Capsicum. "Thought you knew all headquarters' rules, regulations, and observances." "Thought I did know something about them," replied Gingham. "Well, then," replied Capsicum, "don't you know what department young Johnny here belongs to?" "_Your_ department, the commissariat department, I always understood," replied Gingham; "saw his name put down so in the list of passengers per packet at Falmouth. If Mr Y-- will oblige me by referring to a document, which I had the honour of handing him before dinner, he will find himself there designated accordingly." Sure enough, so it was: "G. Y--, Esq., Commissary-General's Department, in A. C., with Gingham Gingham." "But didn't you happen to know that Mr Y--, as you call him," said Capsicum, "was John Barrymore's own nephew?" "Of that circumstance I was not cognisant," replied Gingham, "till I happened to become aware of it by the conversation during dinner. Still I retained my former impression, that Mr Y-- belonged to your department, not to the military chest." "The long and the short of it," said I to Gingham, "is this. Shirty here, I am sorry to say, gives me to understand that, at headquarters, as I am attached to the military chest, and not to the commissariat, I cannot have the pleasure of stretching my legs under your table, when you give a spread. My regret is undissembled and profound."