“Ha! ha! ha! When you were in the army! By George! I like that part of the story amazingly—if the rest is only as good I may feel inclined to allow you half a page more!” “Come, Jerry, none of that; I’ve known fellows talk about the army who never even heard a gun, and chaps spin out most eternal sea-yarns, that never smelt salt water, as any old tar would tell you before he had listened five minutes to the story; but I am none of your green-horns—I know what I am about when I mention war or beauty,—having seen some service in my day. I therefore commence properly—as every story should have a beginning, even if it has no end.” “When I was in the army, you see, I became acquainted with a very sentimental fellow, about your size,—though he _had_ rather a better looking whisker for a soldier,—who was always full of romance, and all that sort of thing,—and I _do_ believe the chap had an idea or two of the right kind in his head, but they were so mixed up with the wrong kind, that, like the funds of a good many bankers now-a-days, they were not always ‘available.’ He had got it into his cranium, and there it would stick, that he had a little better blood in him than any body else, so that he was confoundedly careful not to have any of it spilt, and nothing but the daughter of a lord came any way near the mark to which he aspired. He used to tell a good many stories about himself, and he would tell them pretty well too, but they somehow or other had a smack of the marvellous. His stories about the doings among the gentry—the fellow, you see, had been educated by a lord, or something of that sort, and had seen a little of high life above stairs as well as below—took amazingly in the camp, especially his sentimental ones, for he had the knack of making a fool of himself—” “But, for goodness sake, Oliver! the story!—the story!” “The fact is, Jerry, I am pretty much in the predicament of the knife-grinder!—Story of my own—I have none to tell. But here is one of——confound the fellow’s name,—no matter.” * * * * *