board one of his relations, his eldest son's godfather's second
cousin, who was going back to Corsica, his native country, on important
business, and could not find any ship to take him over.

"He's a charming fellow," added Captain Mattei, "a soldier, an officer
in the Infantry of the Guard, and would have been a colonel already if
_the other_ (meaning Napoleon) had still been emperor!"

"As he is a soldier," began the colonel--he was about to add, "I shall
be very glad he should come with us," when Miss Lydia exclaimed in
English:

"An infantry officer!" (Her father had been in the cavalry, and she
consequently looked down on every other branch of the service.) "An
uneducated man, very likely, who would be sea-sick, and spoil all the
pleasure of our trip!"

The captain did not understand a word of English, but he seemed to catch
what Miss Lydia was saying by the pursing up of her pretty mouth, and
immediately entered upon an elaborate panegyric of his relative, which
he wound up by declaring him to be a gentleman, belonging to a family of
_corporals_, and that he would not be in the very least in the colonel's
way, for that he, the skipper, would undertake to stow him in some
corner, where they should not be aware of his presence.

The colonel and Miss Nevil thought it peculiar that there should be
Corsican families in which the dignity of corporal was handed down from
father to son. But, as they really believed the individual in question
to be some infantry corporal, they concluded he was some poor devil
whom the skipper desired to take out of pure charity. If he had been an