"Mr. Williams, such talk is very unbecoming any gentleman," said he, rising and looking as furious, to use Seth Williams own words, "as an enraged potato bug."
"I beg the pardon of all the company," said Seth, whose face was gravity itself. "I wanted to find some word that would rhyme with ease, and spoke the first that came to my mind."
"The word, sir, is 'please,'" said Corporal Diggs, re-seating himself after entreaty from the ladies, who assured him that it was only a lapsus linguæ on the part of Sergeant Williams.
"Now, corporal, do go on and repeat the entire verse, for I do so admire Sir Walter Scott," pleaded Miss Temple, whose roguish blue eyes were sparkling almost as brightly as those of her friend, Nannie Noddington.
"Yes, Corporal Diggs," said the beautiful Nannie, "do go on and give us the entire stanza."
"Yes, the entire canto," put in Seth.
There was no refusing the appeal from those blue eyes of Miss Temple or the sparkling black eyes of Miss Noddington, so, after a few "hems" and a moment spent in bringing the poem to his memory, the corporal began again:
"O, woman, in our hours of ease
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please;
Yet seem too oft, familiar with her face,