"There it was that Brady lived then," continued Bob Burke, "when he was hobnobbing with Georgius Quartus, and dancing at Almack's with Lady Elizabeth Conynghame. Faith, the nearest approach he ever made to royalty was when he was put into the King's own Bench, where he sojourned many a long day. What an ass I was to believe a word of such stuff! but, nevertheless, it goes down with the rustics to the present minute. I sometimes sport a duke or so myself, when I find myself among yokels, and I rise vastly in estimation by so doing. What do we come to London or Paris for, but to get some touch of knowing how to do things properly? It would be devilish hard, I think, for Ensign Brady, or Ensign Brady's master, to do me nowadays by flamming off titles of high life." The company did no more than justice to Mr Burke's experience, by unanimously admitting that such a feat was all but impossible. "I was," he went on, "a good deal annoyed at my inferiority, and I could not help seeing that Miss Dosy was making comparisons that were rather odious, as she glanced from the gay uniform of the Ensign on my habiliments, which having been perpetrated by a Mallow tailor with a hatchet, or pitchfork, or pickaxe, or some such tool, did not stand the scrutiny to advantage. I was, I think, a better-looking fellow than Brady. Well, well--laugh if you like. I am no beauty, I know; but then, consider that what I am talking of was sixteen years ago, and more; and a man does not stand the battering I have gone through for these sixteen years with impunity. Do you call the thirty or forty thousand tumblers of punch, in all its varieties, that I have since imbibed, nothing?" "Yes," said Jack Ginger, with a sigh, "there was a song we used to sing on board the Brimstone, when cruising about the Spanish main-- "'If Mars leaves his scars, jolly Bacchus as well Sets his trace on the face, which a toper will tell; But which a more merry campaign has pursued, The shedder of wine, or the shedder of blood?' "I forget the rest of it. Poor Ned Nixon! It was he who made that song--he was afterwards bit in two by a shark, having tumbled overboard in the cool of the evening, one fine summer day, off Port Royal." "Well, at all events," said Burke, continuing his narrative, "I thought I was a better-looking fellow than my rival, and was fretted at being sung down. I resolved to outstay him--and though he sate long enough, I, who was more at home, contrived to remain after him, but it was only to hear him extolled. "'A very nice young man,' said Mrs Macnamara. "'An extreme nice young man,' responded Miss Theodosia. "'A perfect gentleman in his manners; he puts me quite in mind of my uncle, the late Jerry O'Regan,' observed Mrs Macnamara. "'Quite the gentleman in every particular,' ejaculated Miss Theodosia. "'He has seen a great deal of the world for so young a man,' remarked Mrs Macnamara. "'He has mixed in the best society, too,' cried Miss Theodosia.