if he
couldn't eat a leg of mutton at a sitting."

"And you call that DINING?" said the Major. "I call it gorging. Why,
those fellows are more uncomfortable after food than before. I have
seen them sitting close before the fire and rubbing their stomachs with
mutton fat to reduce the swelling. Ha! ha! ha!--dining, eh? Oh, Lord!"

"Then if you don't dine to satisfy your hunger, what the deuce do you
eat dinners for at all?" asked the Doctor.

"Why," said the Major, spreading his legs out before him with a benign
smile, and leaning back in his chair, "I eat my dinner, not so much for
the sake of the dinner itself, as for the after-dinnerish feeling which
follows: a feeling that you have nothing to do, and that if you had
you'd be shot if you'd do it. That, to return to where I started from,
is why I won't dine in in the middle of the day."

"If that is the way you feel after dinner, I certainly wouldn't."

"All the most amiable feelings in the human breast," continued the
Major, "are brought out in their full perfection by dinner. If a fellow
were to come to me now and ask me to lend him ten pounds, I'd do it,
provided, you know, that he would fetch out the cheque-book and pen and
ink."

"Laziness is nothing," said the Doctor, "unless well carried out. I
only contradicted you, however, to draw you out; I agree entirely. Do
you know, my friend, I am getting marvellously fond of this climate."

"So am I. But then you know, Doctor, that we are sheltered from the
north wind here by the snow-ranges. The summer in Sydney, now, is
perfectly infernal. The dust is so thick you can't see your hand before
you."

"So I believe," said the Doctor. "By the bye, I got a new butterfly
to-day; rather an event, mind you, here, where there are so few."

"What is he?"

"An Hipparchia," said the Doctor, "Sam saw him first and gave chase."

"You seem to be making quite a naturalist of my boy, Doctor. I am
sincerely obliged to you. If we can make him take to that sort of thing
it may keep him out of much mischief."

"He will never get into much," said the Doctor, "unless I am mistaken;
he is the most docile child I ever came across. It is a pleasure to be
with him. What are you going to do with him?"

"He must go to school, I am afraid," said the Major with a sigh, "I
can't bring my heart to part with him; but his mother has taught him
all she knows, so I suppose he must go to school and fight, and get
flogged, and come home with