"Excuse me, sir," said Gerald, "but weren't you going to say
something else?"

Colonel Ferrers smiled. "You are quick, my boy," he said. "I was
indeed thinking of something that happened forty years ago,--of my
first smoke. Possibly you might be amused to hear about it?"

The boys seemed to think there was no doubt about their being
amused; they drew up two ottomans beside the Colonel's armchair,
and prepared to listen, open-mouthed.

"Forty years ago, then," said the Colonel, "or, to be more exact,
forty-five years, I was a lad of fifteen."

He paused, and smoked in silence for some minutes. Gerald could
not help thinking of Alice and the Mock Turtle, and wondered what
would happen if he should get up and say, "Thank you, sir, for
your interesting story." But he held his peace, and waited.

"Fifteen years old, young gentlemen, and a sad scapegrace, I am
sorry to say. My poor mother had an anxious time of it with me. I
was in the water, or in the fire, or in the clouds from morning
till night, as it seems on looking back. But with all my vagaries,
I had one great desire which had never been gratified,--that was,
to smoke a cigar. My father was a clergyman, and though he had
never forbidden my smoking, I should never have dared to suggest
such a thing to him, for he was strict in his notions, in many
ways. Not too strict, sir, not too strict, by any means, though he
may have seemed so to me then.