“Augh!” said the Corporal, “and a very good reason: you’re a most excellent son, Sir;--and Lunnon so nigh!”
“The thought of London seems to have bewitched you; did you expect to find the streets of gold since you were there last?”
“A--well Sir; I hears they be greatly improved.”
“Pshaw! you talk of knowing the world, Bunting, and yet you pant to enter it with all the inexperience of a boy. Why even I could set you an example.”
“‘Tis ‘cause I knows the world,” said the Corporal, exceedingly nettled, “that I wants to get back to it. I have heard of some spoonies as never kist a girl, but never heard of any one who had kist a girl once, that did not long to be at it again.”
“And I suppose, Mr. Profligate, it is that longing which makes you so hot for London?”
“There have been worse longings nor that,” quoth the Corporal gravely.
“Perhaps you meditate marrying one of the London belles; an heiress--eh?”
“Can’t but say,” said the Corporal very solemnly, “but that might be ‘ticed to marry a fortin, if so be she was young, pretty, good-tempered, and fell desperately in love with me,--best quality of all.”
“Why, the longer a man lives, the more knows his value; would not sell myself a bargain now, whatever might at twenty-one!”
“At that rate you would be beyond all price at seventy,” said Walter: “but now tell me, Bunting, were you ever in love,--really and honestly in love?”
“Indeed, your honour,” said the Corporal, “I have been over head and ears; but that was afore I learnt to swim. Love’s very like bathing. At first we go souse to the bottom, but if we’re not drowned, then we gather pluck, grow calm, strike out gently, and make a deal pleasanter thing of it afore we’ve done. I’ll tell you, Sir, what I thinks of love: ‘twixt you and me, Sir, ‘tis not that great thing in life, boys and girls want to make it out to be; if ‘twere one’s dinner, that would be summut, for one can’t do without that; but lauk, Sir, Love’s all in the fancy. One does not eat it, nor drink it; and as for the rest,--why it’s bother!”
“Bunting, you’re a beast,” said Walter in a rage, for though the Corporal had come off with a slight rebuke for his sneer at religion, we grieve to say that an attack on the sacredness of love seemed a crime beyond all toleration to the theologian of twenty-one.