recurring to the quaint shrewdness of the Corporal, "and what, after all,
is the great charm of the world, that you so much wish to return to it?"

"Augh!" replied the Corporal, "'tis a pleasant thing to look about un
with all one's eyes open; rogue here, rogue there--keeps one alive;--life
in Lunnon, life in a village--all the difference 'twixt healthy walk, and
a doze in arm-chair; by the faith of a man, 'tis!"

"What! it is pleasant to have rascals about one?"

"Surely yes," returned the Corporal drily; "what so delightful like as to
feel one's cliverness and 'bility all set an end--bristling up like a
porkypine; nothing makes a man tread so light, feel so proud, breathe so
briskly, as the knowledge that he's all his wits about him, that he's a
match for any one, that the Divil himself could not take him in. Augh!
that's what I calls the use of an immortal soul--bother!"

Walter laughed.

"And to feel one is likely to be cheated is the pleasantest way of
passing one's time in town, Bunting, eh?"

"Augh! and in cheating too!" answered the Corporal; "'cause you sees,
Sir, there be two ways o' living; one to cheat,--one to be cheated. 'Tis
pleasant enough to be cheated for a little while, as the younkers are,
and as you'll be, your honour; but that's a pleasure don't last long--
t'other lasts all your life; dare say your honour's often heard rich
gentlemen say to their sons, 'you ought, for your own happiness' sake,
like, my lad, to have summut to do--ought to have some profession, be you
niver so rich,'--very true, your honour, and what does that mean? why it