Lizerann (to Susan Jane, as they walk homewards). On'y fancy—the other evenin', as I was walkin' along this very pavement, a cab-'orse come up beyind me, unbeknown like, and put 'is 'ed over my shoulder and breathed right in my ear!
Susan Jane (awestruck). You must ha' bin a bad gell!
[Lizerann is clearly disquieted by so mystical an interpretation, even while she denies having done anything deserving of a supernatural rebuke.
OUR BOOKING-OFFICE.
General Adye has added to our national war story Recollections of a Military Life (Smith, Elder & Co.). Sir John has not been in a hurry. He began fighting more than forty years ago, and has since filled up opportunity as it presented itself. These particular recollections are chiefly occupied with the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, though the old soldier has something to say about the Afghan War of 1878-9, and the Egyptian War of 1882. My Baronite finds most interesting the chapters about the Crimean War, certain incidents and episodes of which are narrated with soldierlike directness and simplicity. The story of the Balaclava Charge has been told in verse and prose innumerable times. General Adye did not actually see it, "a ridge of intervening hills intercepting the view" as he rode back to the camp from Balaclava. But he manages in a sentence or two vividly to impress the scene on the mind of the reader. Among many good stories is one about General Harry Jones. Pelissier, with a Frenchman's scorn of any language but his own, got as near as he could to ordinary pronunciation when he called him "General Hairy-Joze." He did better when the gallant General was knighted, and was alluded to respectfully by the French Commander-in-Chief as "Sairey-Joze" (Sir Harry Jones).
The Baron de Book-Worms.