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.

The Corporal bowed, and thrust his tongue in his cheek.

There was a pause of some moments.

"And what," said Walter, for his spirits were raised, and he liked
recurring to the quaint shrewdness of the Corporal, "and what, after
all, is the great charm of the world, that you so much wish to return to
it?"

"Augh!" replied the Corporal, "'tis a pleasant thing to look about
un with all one's eyes open; rogue here, rogue there--keeps one
alive;--life in Lunnon, life in a village--all the difference 'twixt
healthy walk, and a doze in arm-chair; by the faith of a man, 'tis!"

"What! it is pleasant to have rascals about one?"

"Surely yes," returned the Corporal drily; "what so delightful like as
to feel one's cliverness and 'bility all set an end--bristling up like a
porkypine; nothing makes a man tread so light, feel so proud, breathe so
briskly, as the knowledge that he's all his wits about him, that he's a
match for any one, that the Divil himself could not take him in. Augh!
that's what I calls the use of an immortal soul--bother!"

Walter laughed.

"And to feel one is likely to be cheated is the pleasantest way of
passing one's time in town, Bunting, eh?"

"Augh! and in cheating too!" answered the Corporal; "'cause you sees,
Sir, there be two ways o' living; one to cheat,--one to be cheated. 'Tis
pleasant enough to be cheated for a little while, as the younkers
are, and as you'll be, your honour; but that's a pleasure don't last
long--t'other lasts all your life; dare say your honour's often heard
rich gentlemen say to their sons, 'you ought, for your own happiness'
sake, like, my lad, to have summut to do--ought to have some profession,
be you niver so rich,'--very true, your honour, and what does that mean?
why it means that 'stead of being idle and cheated, the boy ought to be
busy and