“A fiddlestick for their being blown away! They’re quite hearty if they would only think it. Lady Bell makes no complaint, and she is always as fresh as paint when a new pleasure is spoke of. She is something like a girl; I have no patience with girls being vapoured, sir, it is a reproach on you men, if you understood it. Girls were different when I was young, and I ain’t vapoured now that I am old. If you were to cut and shuffle in a hornpipe, like a Jack tar on the boards, I could caper the steps of ‘Joan Saunderson’ or ‘Nancy Dawson’ back again. Since you won’t, let us go the round, and see and be seen by all means; what is life without a bit of pleasure?” CHAPTER VIII. OPINIONS DIFFER. As the party went up-stairs, and strolled about amongst other animated groups, admiring what were reckoned the Gothic portions of the Pantheon, listening to the rising strains of the orchestra, which still admitted the ring of laughing voices—buxom Lady Sundon grew radiant. “Now, ain’t this nice, Harry?” she demanded triumphantly; “ain’t it something to come on shore for—worth years of the sloppy, draggle-tailed country?” “As to nice, the word is too vague. I’d as lief not pledge myself to what you mean by niceness,” he told her; “and I own to being rather fonder of green fields than filthy streets, after a long tack of blue waves.” “But this ain’t filthy streets, Harry. Now, I shall think you right down cross and contrary, if you refuse to admit that the Pantheon, at least, takes your fancy.” “Then, not to mortify you, madam, the Pantheon itself is not half so silly or so bad as many places of public and private entertainment that I’ve been to in my life. If I were to stay on shore, and in London, I should not mind coming sometimes to the Pantheon.” “I dare say you shouldn’t—your humble servant, Harry, for the condescension!” “Especially if I were to come across such a man as Admiral Byron,” continued Captain Fane, bowing low to a bluff, elderly gentleman in passing. “He played the man when he was no more than a middy, young sir”—Captain Fane pointed the application by looking over his shoulder and addressing Sir Peter’s nephew, walking between the Misses Sundon, and instantly beginning to swell with wrath because his tender years were hinted at—“He was a castaway on a South Sea Island, and he managed to survive five years of hardship unparalleled in our day, among savages. There is somebody to look at, worth a hundred of your beaux and belles.” “And han’t I stared the man out,” declared Lady Sundon, “till he thinks there’s a hole in his epaulette, or a paper pinned on his back?” “It isn’t the luck of every one to be a castaway on a South Sea Island, and to learn a lesson from savages,” said Lady Bell. “Beaux and belles can’t help their want of luck. You should be fair, Captain Fane.”