"The best in the Blues, sir; but this is beside the question. The difficulty is, now, about your friend. There may be some retired officer here,--some one who has served; if you will institute inquiry, I'll wait upon you this evening, and conclude our arrangements." I promised I 'd do all in my power, and bowed him out of the room and downstairs with every civility, which, I am bound to say, he also returned, and we parted on excellent terms. Now, Tom, you 'll maybe think it strange of me, with a thing of the kind on hand, but so it was, the moment he was off, I went to look for Mrs. Gore Hampton. "The lady?" cried the waiter; "she started with extra-post half an hour ago." "Started!" exclaimed I,--"which way?" "On the high-road to Munich." "She left no letter,--no note for me?" "No, sir." "Poor thing,--overcome, I suppose. She was crying, wasn't she?" "No, sir, she looked very much as usual, but hurried, perhaps; for she nearly forgot the ham sandwiches she had ordered to be got ready for her." "The ham sandwiches!" exclaimed I, and they nearly choked me. "I 'm going to be shot for a woman that, in the very extremity of her ruin, has the heart to order ham sandwiches!" That was the reflection that arose to my mind, and can you fancy a more bitter one? "Are you sure," asked I, "the sandwiches weren't for Madame Virginie, or the little dog?" "They might, sir, but my Lady desired us to be sure and put plenty of mustard on them." This was the damning circumstance, Tom. She was fond of mustard,--I had often remarked it; and just see, now, on what a trivial thing a man's happiness can hang. For I own to you, so long as I was strong in what I fancied to be her good graces, I could have fought the whole regiment of Blues; but when I thought to myself, "She doesn't care a brass farthing for you, Kenny Dodd; she may be laughing at you this minute over the ham sandwiches,"--I felt like a drowning man that had nothing to grapple on. Talk of unhappy and injured men, indeed! Wasn't I in that category myself? Not even a husband's selfishness could dispute the palm of misery with _me!_ In the matter of desertion we were both in the same boat, and for the life of me, I don't see what we could have to fight about. I never heard of two sailors rescued from shipwreck quarrelling as to who it was lost the vessel! "The best thing for us to do," thought I, "would be to try and console each other; and if he be a sensible, good-hearted fellow, he 'll maybe take the same view of it. I 'll ask him and my Lord to dinner; I'll make the landlord give us some of that wonderful old Stein berger that was bottled three hundred years ago; I 'll treat them to a regular Saxon dish of venison with capers washed down with Marcobrunner, and if we 're not brothers before morning, my name is n't Kenny Dodd."