“The kindest man in existence,” answered I; “all the world knows little Major British.”
“He’s a Major, is he?—why, that’s the fellow that dined with us at Killyax’s; it’s lucky I did not call myself Captain before him, he mightn’t have liked it, you know:” and then Sam fell into a reverie;—what was the subject of his thoughts soon appeared.
“Did you ever SEE such a foot and ankle?” said Sam, after sitting for some time, regardless of the novelty of the scene, his hands in his pockets, plunged in the deepest thought.
“ISN’T she a slap-up woman, eh, now?” pursued he; and began enumerating her attractions, as a horse-jockey would the points of a favorite animal.
“You seem to have gone a pretty length already,” said I, “by promising to visit her to-morrow.”
“A good length?—I believe you. Leave ME alone for that.”
“But I thought you were only to be two in the coupé, you wicked rogue.”
“Two in the coopy? Oh! ah! yes, you know—why, that is, I didn’t know she had her maid with her (what an ass I was to think of a noblewoman travelling without one!) and couldn’t, in course, refuse, when she asked me to let the maid in.”
“Of course not.”
“Couldn’t, you know, as a man of honor; but I made up for all that,” said Pogson, winking slyly, and putting his hand to his little bunch of a nose, in a very knowing way.