does about a public-house, marking the incomings and the outgoings
of the family, and longing to seize the moment when Miss Jowler,
unbiassed by her mother or her papa, might listen, perhaps, to my
eloquence, and melt at the tale of my love.

But it would not do--old Jowler seemed to have taken all of a
sudden to such a fit of domesticity, that there was no finding him
out of doors, and his rhubarb-coloured wife (I believe that her
skin gave the first idea of our regimental breeches), who before
had been gadding ceaselessly abroad, and poking her broad nose into
every menage in the cantonment, stopped faithfully at home with her
spouse. My only chance was to beard the old couple in their den,
and ask them at once for their cub.

So I called one day at tiffin:- old Jowler was always happy to have
my company at this meal; it amused him, he said, to see me drink
Hodgson's pale ale (I drank two hundred and thirty-four dozen the
first year I was in Bengal)--and it was no small piece of fun,
certainly, to see old Mrs. Jowler attack the currie-bhaut;--she was
exactly the colour of it, as I have had already the honour to
remark, and she swallowed the mixture with a gusto which was never
equalled, except by my poor friend Dando a propos d'huitres. She
consumed the first three platefuls with a fork and spoon, like a
Christian; but as she warmed to her work, the old hag would throw
away her silver implements, and dragging the dishes towards her, go
to work with her hands, flip the rice into her mouth with her
fingers, and stow away a quantity of eatables sufficient for a
sepoy company. But why do I diverge from the main point of my
story?