The dinner had been done ample justice to—the wines (and their name was legion) had not been at all neglected—Lord Alfred had become quite intimate with the guardsmen, who, as the wine unlocked their tongues, began, in a quiet, gentlemanly way, to quiz everything and everybody, especially the heavy dragoon, who rejoiced in the patronymic of Gambier—a name on which the other military gentlemen were pleased to exercise their wit whenever they addressed him. As, for example, 1st guardsman, loquitur:——
“I say, Beaupeep, have you heard Fred’s (2nd guardsman’s) last?”
“I haven’t even heard his first,” was the rejoinder.
“No; I should think not,” continued No. 1; “he made that when he was quite a baby in arms.”
“Ye may as well say before he could speak, while ye are about it,” suggested O’Brien.
“Bravo, Captain! you won’t better that,” said the narrator.
“However, Fred’s last and worst was this—‘Why is the gallant cornet opposite, an addition to any mess-table?’ Do you give it up? ‘Because he’s half game and half beer!’”
“I dare say it’s very funny,” muttered the heavy subject of the jest, “but I don’t see the point myself.”
“It’s a pint of half-and-half,” observed Jack Beaupeep, explanatorily.
“Or ‘heavy’ wet, if he were out in the rain,” added guardsman No. 2.