'O yes; I remember meeting you several times at Mrs Grey's, also at a picnic on Bushby Plain, and at a gipsy party. Hadn't we capital fun sometimes?'
'Yes, really. What a pity these happy days are over. We never can recall those bright fresh hours, when the heart gilds everything with a magic glamour.'
'Speak for yourself, Captain Reeves! For my part, I enjoy things as much as ever I did; and my heart "gilds" a good deal still. Do tell me some of your adventures. What have you been doing all the months you were away?'
'Nothing worth relating. I neither discovered a desert island nor a new race of savages. I really have no wonders to narrate.'
'How marvellous! The very lack of incidents makes the thing curious. Now, if I had been cruising about in the Leo for months, I should have gleaned materials enough for at least two volumes of travels.'
'Ah! you ladies draw largely on the imagination. My experience is just this: I went away from England last spring; I return again in time for the Christmas pudding.'
'You sailors are all alike. I never met one yet who could give me the merest sketch of his voyage—all seems a blank, but the going and returning,' Liddy asserts laughingly.
'We had some nice balls at Malta,' replies Walter, rousing himself with a sudden recollection.
'Had you? Who gave them?'