I so contrived it, too, that Miss Matilda should seem as much to be making a convert to her views as to have found a person capable of sympathizing with her; and thus, long before the little supper, with which it was the major’s practice to regale his friends every evening, made its appearance, we had established a perfect understanding together,--a circumstance that, a bystander might have remarked, was productive of a more widely diffused satisfaction than I could have myself seen any just cause for. Mr. Burton was also progressing, as the Yankees say, with the sister; Sparks had booked himself as purchaser of military stores enough to make the campaign of the whole globe; and we were thus all evidently fulfilling our various vocations, and affording perfect satisfaction to our entertainers. Then came the spatch-cock, and the sandwiches, and the negus, which Fanny first mixed for papa, and subsequently, with some little pressing, for Mr. Burton; Matilda the romantic assisted _me_; Sparks helped himself. Then we laughed, and told stories; pressed Sparks to sing, which, as he declined, we only pressed the more. How, invariably, by-the-bye, is it the custom to show one’s appreciation of anything like a butt by pressing him for a song! The major was in great spirits; told us anecdotes of his early life in India, and how he once contracted to supply the troops with milk, and made a purchase, in consequence, of some score of cattle, which turned out to be bullocks. Matilda recited some lines from Pope in my ear. Fanny challenged Burton to a rowing match. Sparks listened to all around him, and Mrs. Dalrymple mixed a very little weak punch, which Dr. Lucas had recommended to her to take the last thing at night,--_Noctes coenoeque_ etc. Say what you will, these were very jovial little _réunions_. The girls were decidedly very pretty. We were in high favor; and when we took leave at the door, with a very cordial shake hands, it was with no _arrière pensée_ we promised to see them in the morning. CHAPTER XXV. THE ENTANGLEMENT.