"Hem, hem, hem! Miss Temple, I presume—hem—you are very fond of poetry," he said, leaning back in his chair, his soleful eyes gleaming through his glasses.
"I am passionately fond of poetry, corporal," said the blonde beauty, with a winning smile.
"I—hem, hem!—before I entered the army, used to be passionately fond of poetry, but the multifarious duties of an officer during these exciting times will allow no thought of polite accomplishments."
"He is inflating now," whispered Seth Williams to Miss Noddington. "He will explode soon in a burst of poetical eloquence."
Mr. Diggs, as we have seen, had a peculiar stoppage in his speech, occasioned more by habit than by any defect in the organs of articulation.
"Yes, Miss Temple, I—hem, hem, hem!—admire, or rather I adore poetry. The deep sublimity of thought—hem, hem, hem!—given forth in all of poetical expression and—hem, hem!—as the poet says 'the eye in fine frenzy rolling.'"
"That was in his 'Ode to an Expiring Calf,' was it not?" said Seth Williams, who was one of the group.
No one could repress a smile, and Miss Noddington was attacked by a convulsive cough.
"You always have a way of degrading the sublime to the ridiculous, Mr. Williams," said the little corporal, loftily.
"Who of the English poets do you like best, Corporal Diggs?" asked Miss Temple, pretending not to notice Williams' sally and the consequent discomfiture of her companion.