"Thanks—about this Spanish girl?"
"Fill your glass, and push across the decanter; has not that bottle been a little corked, think you?"
"Perhaps—about this Spanish girl?" continued Jack doggedly.
"Well, what the deuce about her?"
"You were just on the point of remarking some thing."
"Only that her eyes were very fine, were they not?"
"Very, but I prefer blue—
"'No fair fräulein nor dem——-'
"For heaven's sake, Jack, don't begin that ever-lasting ditty!" said I, pettishly; "yes, Paulina's eyes were beautiful; they seemed, as the Spaniards say, to be in mourning for the murders they committed."
"A stale compliment," was Jack's retort to my interruption of a song with which he had favoured the mess every night since we left Southampton, for a small amount of vocal talent will go a long way to charm a mess-table; "she murdered you, however, with very little compunction; but to think of the doctor's botanising with the mother being mistaken for love-making—was it not glorious, Dick?"