"I suppose verses, eh! as well as prose? I was a dab at verses myself. I
recollect when I first joined, I used to write verses for the fellows in
the regiment; and did some pretty things in that way. I was talking to my
old friend General Hobbler about some lines I dashed off for him in the
year 1806, when we were at the Cape, and, Gad, he remembered every line
of them still; for he'd used 'em so often, the old rogue, and had
actually tried 'em on Mrs. Hobbler, sir--who brought him sixty thousand
pounds. I suppose you've tried verses, eh, Pen?"

Pen blushed again, and said, "Why, yes, he had written verses."

"And does the fair one respond in poetry or prose?" asked the Major,
eyeing his nephew with the queerest expression, as much as to say, "O
Moses and Green Spectacles! what a fool the boy is."

Pen blushed again. She had written, but not in verse, the young lover
owned, and he gave his breast-pocket the benefit of a squeeze with his
left arm, which the Major remarked, according to his wont.

"You have got the letters there, I see," said the old campaigner, nodding
at Pen and pointing to his own chest (which was manfully wadded with
cotton by Mr. Stultz). "You know you have. I would give twopence to see
'em."

"Why," said Pen, twiddling the stalks of the strawberries, "I--I," but
this sentence never finished; for Pen's face was so comical and
embarrassed, as the Major watched it, that the elder could contain his
gravity no longer, and burst into a fit of laughter, in which chorus Pen
himself was obliged to join after a minute: when he broke out fairly into
a guffaw.