boots. Ours is an
age of paletots and easy manners, and you are trying to revive what our
grandfathers discarded and got rid of. It won't do, Pottinger; it will
not."

"I am not Pottinger; my name is Algernon Sydney Potts."

"Ah! there's the mischief all out at last. What could come of such a
collocation of names but a life of incongruity and absurdity! You owe
all your griefs to your godfathers, Potts. If they 'd have called you
Peter, you 'd have been a well-conducted poor creature. Well, I'm to
give you a passport. Where do you wish to go?"

"I wish, first of all, to go to Como."

"I think I know why. But you're on a wrong cast there. They have left
that long since."

"Indeed, and for what place?"

"They 've gone to pass the winter at Malta. Mamma Keats required a dry,
warm climate, and you 'll find them at a little country-house about a
mile from Valetta; the Jasmines, I think it's called. I have a brother
quartered in the island, and he tells me he has seen them, but they
won't receive visits, nor go out anywhere. But, of course, a Royal
Highness is always sure of a welcome. Prince Potts is an 'Open, sesame!'
wherever he goes."

"What atrocious tobacco this is of yours, Buller!" said I, taking a
cigar from his case as it lay on the table. "I suppose that you small
fry of diplomacy cannot get things in duty free, eh?"

"Try this cheroot; you 'll find it better," said he, opening a secret
pocket in the case.

"Nothing to boast of," said I, puffing away, while he continued to fill
up the blanks in my passport.

"Would you like an introduction to my brother? He's on the Government
staff there, and knows every one. He's a jolly sort of fellow, besides,
and you 'll get on well together."

"I don't care if I do," said I, carelessly; "though, as a rule, your
red-coat is very bad style,--flippant without smartness, and familiar
without ease."

"Severe, Potts, but not altogether unjust; but you 'll find George above
the average of his class, and I think you 'll like him."

"Don't let him ask me to his mess," said I, with an insolent drawl.
"That's an amount of boredom I could not submit to. Caution him to make
no blunder of that kind."

He looked up at me with a strange twinkle in his eyes, which I could not
interpret He was either in intense enjoyment of my smartness, or Heaven
knows what other sentiment then moved him. At all events, I was in
ecstasy at the success of my newly discovered vein, and walke