"Hem, hem, hem! Miss Temple, I presume--hem--you are very fond of poetry," he said, leaning back in his chair, his soleful eyes gleaming through his glasses. "I am passionately fond of poetry, corporal," said the blonde beauty, with a winning smile. "I--hem, hem!--before I entered the army, used to be passionately fond of poetry, but the multifarious duties of an officer during these exciting times will allow no thought of polite accomplishments." "He is inflating now," whispered Seth Williams to Miss Noddington. "He will explode soon in a burst of poetical eloquence." Mr. Diggs, as we have seen, had a peculiar stoppage in his speech, occasioned more by habit than by any defect in the organs of articulation. "Yes, Miss Temple, I--hem, hem, hem!--admire, or rather I adore poetry. The deep sublimity of thought--hem, hem, hem!--given forth in all of poetical expression and--hem, hem!--as the poet says 'the eye in fine frenzy rolling.'" "That was in his 'Ode to an Expiring Calf,' was it not?" said Seth Williams, who was one of the group. No one could repress a smile, and Miss Noddington was attacked by a convulsive cough. "You always have a way of degrading the sublime to the ridiculous, Mr. Williams," said the little corporal, loftily. "Who of the English poets do you like best, Corporal Diggs?" asked Miss Temple, pretending not to notice Williams' sally and the consequent discomfiture of her companion. "I--hem, hem!" said the little fellow, leaning forward and locking his hands, with all the dignity that he assumed when about to give one of his opinions. "I--hem--am rather partial to Scott. I don't know why, unless his wild poems rather suit my warlike nature. I like to read of Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, and the Vision of Don--Don--hem--Don--" "Quixote," put in Seth Williams. The bright black eyes of Miss Noddington twinkled, but Miss Temple feigned sympathy with the corporal, whose memory was evidently bad. "But--hem, hem!--Miss Temple," he went on, heroic to the last, "that is a sublime as well as a truthful thought of Scott, who says,--hem, hem!--how does it begin? Oh yes: "O, woman, in our hours of ease Uncertain, coy, and hard to--" "Squeeze," put in Seth Williams, who was really boiling over with mischief. Miss Temple looked shocked, but Miss Noddington only buried her blushing face in her handkerchief. The discomforted Corporal Diggs cast a furious glance at Seth Williams, who sat with a face as solemn as any judge on the bench. "Mr. Williams, such talk is very unbecoming any gentleman," said he, rising and looking as furious, to use Seth Williams own words, "as an enraged potato bug." "I beg the pardon of all the company," said Seth, whose face was gravity itself. "I wanted to find some word that would rhyme with ease, and spoke the first that came to my mind."