Primed with such sage counsel, his lordship determined to lose no time in “opening the trenches.” After enacting sundry duty-dances, by which he had gained at least one prospective “plumper,” he accordingly “completed the first parallel” by obtaining an introduction to General Bounce, which ceremony Captain Lacquers performed in his usual easy off-hand style--the introducer shouting into each man’s ear his listener’s _own_ name, and suppressing altogether that of his new acquaintance, an ingenious method of presenting people to each other without furthering their intimacy to any great extent. The General, however, and the member had known each other previously by sight as well as by name, the former having voted and spoken against the latter at the past election, with his peculiar abruptness and energy; but Mount Helicon was the last man in the world to owe an antagonist a grudge, and being keenly alive to the ridiculous, was prepared to be delighted with his political opponent, in whom he saw a fund of absurdity, out of which he promised himself much amusement. “Glad to make your acquaintance, my Lud,” said the General, standing well behind his orders and decorations, which showed to great advantage on a coat tightly buttoned across his somewhat corpulent frame--“Don’t like your politics--what? never did--progress and all that, sir, not worth a row of gingerbread--don’t tell _me_--why, what did Lord Hindostan say to me at Government House, when they threatened to report me at home for exceeding my orders? ‘Bounce,’ says his Excellency--‘Bounce, _I’ll see you through it_’--what? _nothing like a big stick for a nigger_. _Stick!_ how d’ye mean?”--and the speaker, who was beginning to foam at the mouth, suddenly changed his tone to one of the sweetest politeness, as he introduced ‘My niece, Miss Kettering; Lord Mount Helicon.’ A second time was Frank Hardingstone forestalled; he had just made up his mind that he would dance with Blanche only _once_, sun himself yet _once_ again in her sweet smile, and then think of her no more--a sensible resolution, but not very easy to carry out. Of course he laid the blame on her. “First she makes a fool of D’Orville,” thought he, “a man old enough to be her father--and now she whisks away with this red-bearded radical--to make a fool of him too, unless she means to throw over Charlie; and who is the greatest fool of the three? Why, you, Frank Hardingstone, who ought to know better. I shall go home, smoke a cigar, and go to bed; the dream is over; I had no idea it would be so unpleasant to wake from it.” So Frank selected his hat, pulled out his cigar-case, and trudged off, by no means in a philosophical or even a charitable frame of mind.