Still it won't do to stop where they are, like the cocoa-nut and the pincushion of our friends, the gipsies, on the downs: so they take arms and commence the journey home, resembling the best of friends on the evening of a holiday in our native clime--two steps to the right, half-a-dozen to the left, etcaetera.' Thus, with scarce a variation from the facts, with but a flowery chaplet cast on a truthful narrative, as it were, Captain Baskelett could render ludicrous that which in other quarters had obtained honourable mention.
Nevil and Drew being knocked down by the wind of a ball near the battery, 'Confound it!' cries Nevil, jumping on his feet, 'it's because I consented to a compromise!'-- a transparent piece of fiction this, but so in harmony with the character stripped naked for us that it is accepted.

Imagine Nevil's love-affair in such hands! Recovering from a fever, Nevil sees a pretty French girl in a gondola, and immediately thinks, 'By jingo, I'm marriageable.' He hears she is engaged.

'By jingo, she's marriageable too.' He goes through a sum in addition, and the total is a couple; so he determines on a marriage.

'You can't get it out of his head; he must be married instantly, and to her, because she is going to marry somebody else.

Sticks to her, follows her, will have her, in spite of her father, her marquis, her brother, aunts, cousins, religion, country, and the young woman herself.