“It isn't he; it was I who was performing the war dance. Come, now, let down your hair, and be a squaw,--do. What trouble is it? And bring in Saladin; we'll get up a combat scene. Devilish fine thought that!” The indignant look of the lady in reply to this modest proposal again overpowered me, and I sank back in my bed exhausted with laughter,--an emotion which I was forced to subdue as well as I might on beholding the angry countenance with which the lady regarded me. “I say, Burke,” cried the captain, “let me present you to my sister, Miss Anna Maria Bubbleton.” A very dry recognition on Miss Anna Maria's part replied to the effort I made to salute her; and as she turned on her heel, she said to her brother, “Breakfast's ready,” and left the room. Bubbleton jumped up at this, rubbed his mouth pleasantly with his hand, smacked his lips; and then dropping his voice to a whisper, muttered, “Excuse me, Tom; but if I have a weakness it is for Yarmouth bloaters, and anchovy toast, milk chocolate, marmalade, hot rolls, and reindeer tongue, with a very small glass of pure white brandy as a qualifier.” So saying, he whisked about and made his exit. While my host was thus occupied, I was visited by the regimental surgeon, who informed me that my illness had now been of some weeks' duration; severe brain fever, with various attending evils, and a broken arm, being the happy results of my evening's adventure at the Parliament House. “Bubbleton is an old friend of yours,” continued the doctor. And then, without giving me time to reply, added, “Capital fellow,--no better; a little given to the miraculous, eh? but nothing worse.” “Why, he does indeed seem to have a strong vein for fiction,” said I, half timidly. “Bless your heart, he never ceases. His world is an ideal thing, fall of impossible people and events, where he has lived at least some centuries, enjoying the intimacies of princes, statesmen, poets, and warriors. He has, in his own estimation, unlimited wealth and unbounded resources, the want of which he is never convinced of till pressed for five shillings to buy his dinner.” “And his sister,” said I; “what of her?” “Just as strange a character in the opposite direction. She is as matter of fact as he is imaginative. To all his flights she as resolutely enters a dissentient; and he never inflates his balloon of miracles without her stepping forward to punch a hole in it. But here they come.” “I say. Pepper, how goes your patient? Spare no pains, old fellow,--no expense; only get him round. I've left a cheque for you for five hundred in the next room. This is no regimental case; come, come! it 's my way, and I insist upon it.” Pepper bowed with an air of the deepest gratitude, and actually looked so overpowered by the liberality that I began to suspect there might be less truth in his account of Bubbleton than I thought a few minutes before.