"My dear feller, make me some more, only mind—be sure you sell these to some genteel old feller."
I like to saunter thro' Regent Street. The shops are pretty, and it does the old man's hart good to see the troops of fine healthy girls which one may always see there at certain hours in the afternoon, who don't spile their beauty by devourin cakes and sugar things, as too many of the American and French lasses do. It's a mistake about everybody being out of town, I guess. Regent Street is full. I'm here; and as I said before, I come of a very clever fam'ly.
As I was walkin along, amoosin myself by stickin my penknife into the calves of the footmen who stood waitin by the swell-coaches (not one of whom howled with angwish), I was accosted by a man of about thirty-five summers, who said, "I have seen that face somewheres afore!"
He was a little shabby in his wearin apparil. His coat was one of those black, shiny garments, which you can always tell have been burnished by adversity; but he was very gentlemanly.
"Was it in the Crimea, comrade? Yes, it was. It was at the stormin of Sebastopol, where I had a narrow escape from death, that we met."
I said, "No, I wasn't at Sebastopol; I escaped a fatal wound by not bein there. It was a healthy old fortress," I added.
"It was. But it fell. It came down with a crash."
"And plucky boys they was who brought her down," I added; "and hurrah for 'em!"
The man graspt me warmly by the hand, and said he had been in America, Upper Canada, Africa, Asia Minor, and other towns, and he'd never met a man he liked as much as he did me.
"Let us," he added, "let us to the shrine of Bachus!"