"Pat a cake, pat a cake, baker's man."
--_Old Ballad_.
Colonel PURSER was a stout, plethoric man. He was five feet seven
inches high, forty-five inches round the chest, fifty inches round
the waist, and every inch of him was a soldier. He was, therefore, a
host in himself. He gasped, and turned red, but, like a real soldier,
at once grasped the situation. The Colonel was powerful, and the
situation, in spite of all my pains, was not a strong one. The
struggle was short.
"Pardon me," said the Colonel, when he had recovered his wind, "is
your name MIGNON?"
"Yes," she replied, as the tears brimmed over in her lovely eyes,
"it is. I am a simple soldier's child, but, oh, I can run so
beautifully--through ever so many volumes, and lots of editions. In
fact," she added, confidentially, "I don't see why I should stop at
all, do you? EMILY _must_ marry me. He can't marry OLIVE, because
Dame Nature put in _her_ eyes with a dirty finger. Ugh! I've got
blue eyes."
"But," retorted the Colonel, quickly, "shall you never quarrel?"
"Oh yes," answered MIGNON, "there will come a rift in the hitherto
perfect lute of our friendship (the rift's name will be DARKEY), but
we shall manage to bridge it over--at least TOM RUM SUMMER says so."
Here EMILY broke in. He could stand it no longer. "Dash it, you know,
this is wewry extwraowrdinawry, wewry extwraowrdinawry indeed," he
observed; "You'wre a most wremawrkable young woman, you know."
A shout of laughter followed this remark, and in the fog of
tobacco-smoke Colonel PURSER could be dimly seen draining a magnum
of champagne.