[Picture: “Whence comest thou, Gehazi?” (An exhortation to repentance)] My weary afternoons I usually beguiled by pantomimic love-passages with a frowsy damsel in a neighbouring house. Our acquaintance began as I watched a portion of her graceful form bulging over a window-sill she was cleaning at the time, which ripened into such an intimacy, that day by day we looked out for each other, and exchanged such protestations of devotion as might be conveyed by her holding up to me portions of her employer’s eatables, such as eggs and once a steak, which I gracefully reciprocated by exposing Government property, such as a medicine bottle and occasionally bread-and-butter. Graceful Selina! may my successor have been more worthy of your innocent virgin heart! CHAPTER XXVI. BURGLARS “I HAVE MET.” THE number of admissions into hospital about this time necessitated my having a companion billeted on me, an unfortunate Frenchman, utterly oblivious of any language but his own; and as it turned out that his attainments in English were exactly of the same extent as that of the warders in French, there seemed to be an impassable gulf fixed between all communication of ideas, if either party had happened to possess any. He was complaining to me one day of the disadvantage he laboured under, and described the usual conversation that took place daily between himself and the hospital warder. “Well, are you better?” “No, sare.” “O, all right.” “_Voilà mon ami_. What do you tink?” My companion, I was gratified to observe, was gradually mastering some of the idioms of our language. Not long after, an extraordinary creature was admitted as a patient, and I cannot to this day say what his nationality was, although I am inclined to believe his language was some kind of Russian _patois_. Nobody could make head or tail of him, and a distracted warder, in this dilemma recollecting my success with the “other foreigner” and doubtless giving me credit for a knowledge of every language of the earth besides a few of the lunar ones, came and asked me to try and understand him. My knowledge of outlandish languages is not remarkably extensive (it is confined, I may state, to the Hottentot word for “rice” and the Chinese for “smoke”), and as no one appeared to have a Russian dictionary, I addressed him in Hindustani, considering that in point of longitude it came geographically nearest the Russian. He at once replied in a rambling speech, throwing his arms about and beating his chest; and though I am convinced he understood no more of my speech than I had of his, my reputation was established, the more so as he had no means of betraying my secret. Having then explained to the warder that he complained of pains in the chest, and would prefer an egg beaten in his tea instead of boiled (a change I considered unlikely to materially affect his complaint), I retired to my apartment.