pleasure.

"Ah! this is all right! You are here to-night at all events; but,
by-the-by, what became of you yesterday?"

"What always becomes of me?" reply I, bluntly, lifting my grave gray
eyes to his face, and to the hair which sweeps thick and waved above his
broad brown forehead. (Tongs indeed!)

"I remember that you told me you had been _cooking_, but you cannot
cook _every_ night."

"Not quite," reply I, with a short smile, stretching my hands to the
blaze.

"But do not you dine generally?"

"Never when I can possibly help it," I reply, with emphasis. And no
sooner are the words out of my mouth than I see that I have already
transgressed my mother's commands, and given vent to one of "my unlucky
things." I stand silent and ashamed, reflecting that no after-tinkering
will mend my unfortunate speech.

"And to-night you could not help it?" he asks, after a slight, hardly
perceptible pause.

I look up to answer him. He is forty-seven years old. He is a general,
and a sir, and has been in every known land; has killed big and little
beasts, and known big and little people, and I am nineteen and nobody,
and have rarely been beyond our own park and parish, and my acquaintance