"General," say I, standing before him, dressed for morning church, after having previously turned slowly round on the point of my toes, to favor him with the back view of as delightful a bonnet, and as airily fresh and fine a muslin gown, as ever young woman said her prayers in—"by-the-by, do you like my calling you general?"
"At least I understand who you mean by it," he says, a little evasively; "which, after all, is the great thing, is not it?"
"It is my own invention," say I, rather proudly; "nobody put it into my head, and nobody else calls you by it, do they?"
"Not now."
"Not now?" cry I, surprised; "but did they ever?"
"Yes," he says, "for about a year, most people did; I was general a year before my brother died."
"Your brother died?" cry I, again repeating his words, and arching my eyebrows, which have not naturally the slightest tendency toward describing a semicircle. "What! you had a brother, too, had you? I never knew that before."
"Did you think you had a monopoly of them?" laughing a little.
"So you were not 'Sir' always?"
"No more than you are," he answers, smiling. "No, I was not born in the purple; for thirty-seven years of my life I earned my own bread—and rather dry bread too."