“He’s a Major, is he?—why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he mightn’t have liked it, you know:” and then Sam fell into a reverie;—what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared. “Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?” said Sam, after sitting for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought. “ISN’T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?” pursued he; and began enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favorite animal. “You seem to have gone a pretty length already,” said I, “by promising to visit her to-morrow.” “A good length?—I believe you. Leave ME alone for that.” “But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked rogue.” “Two in the coopy? Oh! ah! yes, you know—why, that is, I didn’t know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling without one!) and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in.” “Of course not.” “Couldn’t, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all that,” said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way. “You did, and how?” “Why, you dog, I sat next to her; sat in the middle the whole way, and my back’s half broke, I can tell you:” and thus, having depicted his happiness, we soon reached the inn where this back-broken young man was to lodge during his stay in Paris. The next day at five we met; Mr. Pogson had seen his Baroness, and described her lodgings, in his own expressive way, as “slap-up.” She had received him quite like an old friend; treated him to eau sucrée, of which beverage he expressed himself a great admirer; and actually asked him to dine the next day. But there was a cloud over the ingenuous youth’s brow, and I inquired still farther. “Why,” said he, with a sigh, “I thought she was a widow; and, hang it! who should come in but her husband the Baron: a big fellow, sir, with a blue coat, a red ribbing, and SUCH a pair of mustachios!” “Well,” said I, “he didn’t turn you out, I suppose?” “Oh, no! on the contrary, as kind as possible; his lordship said that he respected the English army; asked me what corps I was in,—said he had fought in Spain against us,—and made me welcome.” “What could you want more?” Mr. Pogson at this only whistled; and if some very profound observer of human nature had been there to read into this little bagman’s heart, it would, perhaps, have been manifest, that the appearance of a whiskered soldier of a husband had counteracted some plans that the young scoundrel was concocting.