main body, in great alarm hid yourself and your men in a
little Spanish village too mean to have a name. The French found you
out, and kept you shut up there in great trepidation for five or six
hours, while they were cutting away your barricades, beating in the
doors, and tearing off the roofs of the houses. Your case was as
desperate as that of a rat in a trap; and when your friends came to
your relief, they had to knock a great many of the French in the head
before they could persuade them to let you slip out. But, by some
lucky misunderstanding at headquarters, you were soon after made a
lieut. colonel."

"Do you know," said L'Isle, laughing, "that this is, to me, quite a
new version of that little affair? Did you hear whether we did the
French any damage, while they beset us so closely?"

"Nothing was said on that score. So I suppose you did them little
harm."

"It is lucky for me that your informant had not the reporting of this
affair at headquarters."

"It is said that you had that more adroitly done by your own friends."

"They give me credit at least for good diplomacy," said L'Isle. "Or,
at all events, it is a good thing to have a friend at court--that is,
at the elbow of the commander-in-chief. And it seems that I have one
there. But still you make a great mistake in declining my services as
a teacher of the Spanish tongue. I may be a blundering soldier, but
have made myself thoroughly master of the languages of the Peninsula,
and have a decided aptitude for teaching. Let me begin by warning you
against a blunder we English always commit, in trying to speak a
tongue not our own, with the mouth half open, and the hands in the
pockets. Now, when you address a foreigner in his own tongue, speak
with much noise and vociferation, opening your mouth wide and using
much action. The ideas you cannot convey in words, you must
communicate by gesticulation, the more emphatic the better."

"What!" said Lady Mabel. "Would you have me go scolding and
gesticulating at every foreign fellow I meet with, and become
notorious throughout Elvas as the British virago?"

"There is no danger of that," said L'Isle. "They would only say that
you have as much vivacity as a native, and soon begin to understand
you."

"I have made the acquaintance of some ladies of Elvas. As yet our
intercourse has been limited to a few formal visits, and a few set
phrases mingled with pantomime. But some of them are disposed to be
very soci