'A card,' answered Mirelle. 'Mr. Herring's address.' She raised it and read:—
'Lieut. Herring, 25th Reg.
Welltown,
- Cornwall.'
'Why!' she exclaimed, supremely shocked, 'he is an officer in the army, and I thought he was a commis voyageur for some grocery or drapery business. Where is he?'
John Herring was gone. She had not even thanked him for what he had done for her, and he had done for her, and would do for her, far more than she knew. However proudly she may have resolved to hold her future in her own hands, that future was in his.
'Herring!—Welltown!' echoed Mr. Trampleasure: 'why, he is the son of old Jago Herring after all.'
'Twenty-fifth!' echoed Captain Trecarrel: 'why, he must have been at Waterloo.'
'Waterloo, by all the rules of military science, ought to have been a victory to the Emperor,' said Mirelle. 'Indeed, it was a victory, but the arrival of the Prussians, and thereby the preponderating numerical power brought to bear against our troops when exhausted, compelled them to retreat.'
'Sampy,' said Trampleasure, in an undertone to his son, 'I had a peck or two at old Jago, and there must be flesh on the bones of the son. The old fool has sent his son into the army to make a gentleman of him. Quick! run after him, my lad, and beg him, whenever he passes through Launceston, to give us a call, and see how the Countess Candelstickio is picking up her crumbs.'