"Yet," said I, hoping he would soon be better, "Mr Gingham, it seems, can dine with you, without any breach of propriety."
"Yes, yes, to be sure he can," said Capsicum; "and so can you. Our Department don't finger the cash. Don't you see? That makes all the difference. Hope you'll both dine with me often."
"Shall be very happy," replied I: "much obliged for your kind invitation. But still I can't understand. Mr Gingham has been at headquarters before, and knows headquarters. He also knows, I suppose, that your humble servant is a clerk of the military chest. Yet it was he himself who made the proposal that he and I should campaign together."
"Can't explain that," said Capsicum; "must leave him to explain that as he can. Oh! here he comes."
Gingham, before he turned in, had been on deck, to take a last look at the weather, to commune with the silent night, to scrutinise the horizon, to soliloquise with the clouds, and perhaps for some better and more solemn purposes: for Gingham, with all his oddities, was a man of religious principle, and of devotional feeling, and cared not who knew it. He now approached, and seated himself with us at the cabin table.
"Saw you at Cadiz," said Capsicum. "Think I saw you at Madrid."
"I saw you at Canton," coolly replied Gingham. Capsicum looked a little queer.
"At Canton?" said Capsicum. "Saw me at Canton? Did you, though? Come, come, now you're joking, you know. Did you though, really? How was I dressed?"
"You were dressed like what you were; not exactly as you are dressed now. You had a long, taper pigtail, reaching down to your heels; no hair on your head besides. You had slippers, scarlet and gold, turned up at the toes. You carried a fan; and didn't I once or twice see you followed by a fellow who carried a parasol over your head at the top of a long pole? You had—"
"I'll tell you what," said Capsicum precipitately; "I'm a Christian for all that, and my father was an Englishman. True, I was bred at Canton; but I wasn't born there. Born at Macao. My mother—"