Days afterwards, a couple of soldiers, lounging into La Morgue, the dismal receptacle where bodies are exposed for identification, recognized in a pallid and bloated corpse the remains of the late lieutenant colonel of the ——th hussars.
Lioncourt learned his fate, but it threw no shadow over his bright and cloudless happiness.
A KISS ON DEMAND.
It was a very peculiar sound, something like the popping of a champagne cork, something like the report of a small pocket pistol, but exactly like nothing but itself. It was a kiss.
A kiss implies two parties—unless it be one of those symbolical kisses produced by one pair of lips, and wafted through the air in token of affection or admiration. But this particular kiss was genuine. The parties in the case were Mrs. Phebe Mayflower, the newly-married wife of honest Tom Mayflower, gardener to Mr. Augustus Scatterly, and that young gentleman himself. Augustus was a good-hearted, rattle-brained spendthrift, who had employed the two or three years which had elapsed since his majority in "making ducks and drakes" of the pretty little fortune left him by his defunct sire. There was nothing very bad about him, excepting his prodigal habits, and by these he was himself the severest sufferer. Tom, his gardener, had been married a few weeks, and Gus, who had failed to be at the wedding, and missed the opportunity of "saluting the bride," took it into his head that it was both proper and polite that he should do so on the first occasion of his meeting her subsequently to that interesting ceremony. Mrs. Mayflower, the other party interested in the case, differed from him in opinion, and the young landlord kissed her in spite of herself. But she was not without a champion, for at the precise moment when Scatterly placed his audacious lips in contact with the blooming cheek of Mrs. M., Tom entered the garden and beheld the outrage.
"What are you doing of, Mr. Scatterly?" he roared.
"O, nothing, Tom, but asserting my rights! I was only saluting the bride."
"Against my will, Tommy," said the poor bride, blushing like a peony, and wiping the offended cheek with her checked apron.