“I am not likely to do so,” said he, with a grim smile. “I am glad, too, to meet his father's son; we were at Christ Church together; and now I see he has the family good looks. 'Le beau Trafford' was a proverb in Paris once.”
“Do you ever forget a man?” asked the Colonel, in some curiosity.
“I believe not. I forget books, places, dates occasionally, but never people. I met an old schoolfellow t'other day at Dover whom I never saw since we were boys. He had gone down in the world, and was acting as one of the 'commissionnaires' they call them, who take your keys to the Custom-house to have your luggage examined; and when he came to ask me to employ him, I said, “'What! ain't you Jemmy Harper?' 'And who the devil are you?' said he. 'Fossbrooke,' said I. 'Not “Wart”?' said he. That was my school nickname, from a wart I once had on my chin. 'Ay, to be sure,' said I, 'Wart.' I wish you saw the delight of the old dog. I made him dine with us. Lord Brackington was with me, and enjoyed it all immensely.”
“And what had brought him so low?”
“He was cursed, he said, with a strong constitution; all the other fellows of his set had so timed it that when they had nothing to live on they ceased to live; but Jemmy told us he never had such an appetite as now; that he passed from fourteen to sixteen hours a day on the pier in all weathers; and as to gout he firmly believed it all came of the adulterated wines of the great wine-merchants. British gin he maintained to be the wholesomest liquor in existence.”
“I wonder how fellows bear up under such reverses as that,” said the Colonel.
“My astonishment is rather,” cried Fossbrooke, “how men can live on in a monotony of well-being, getting fatter, older, and more unwieldy, and with only such experiences of life as a well-fed fowl might have in a hencoop.”
“I know that's your theory,” said the other, laughing.
“Well, no man can say that I have not lived up to my convictions; and for myself, I can aver I have thoroughly enjoyed my intercourse with the world, and like it as well to-day as on the first morning I made my bow to it.”
“Listen to this, young gentlemen,” said the Colonel, turning to his officers, who now gathered around them. “Now and then I hear some of you complaining of being bored or wearied,—sick of this, tired of that; here's my friend, who knows the whole thing better than any of us, and he declares that the world is the best of all possible worlds, and that so far from familiarity with it inspiring disgust with life, his enjoyment of it is as racy as when first he knew it.”