simple subjects of
Montezuma looked at one of Cortes's heavy dragoons.

"That must be a marquis at least," whispers Lankin, who consults me
on points of society, and is pleased to have a great opinion of my
experience.

I burst out in a scornful laugh. "THAT!" I say; "he is a captain of
dragoons, and his father an attorney in Bedford Row. The whiskers of a
roturier, my good Lankin, grow as long as the beard of a Plantagenet. It
don't require much noble blood to learn the polka. If you were younger,
Lankin, we might go for a shilling a night, and dance every evening at
M. Laurent's Casino, and skip about in a little time as well as that
fellow. Only we despise the kind of thing you know,--only we're too
grave, and too steady."

"And too fat," whispers Lankin, with a laugh.

"Speak for yourself, you maypole," says I. "If you can't dance yourself,
people can dance round you--put a wreath of flowers upon your old poll,
stick you up in a village green, and so make use of you."

"I should gladly be turned into anything so pleasant," Lankin answers;
"and so, at least, get a chance of seeing a pretty girl now and then.
They don't show in Pump Court, or at the University Club, where I dine.
You are a lucky fellow, Titmarsh, and go about in the world. As for me,
I never--"

"And the judges' wives, you rogue?" I say. "Well, no man is satisfied;
and the only reason I have to be angry with the captain yonder is,
that, the other night, at Mrs. Perkins's, being in conversation with a
charming young creature--who knows all my favorite passages in Tennyson,
and takes a most delightful little line of opposition in the Church
controversy--just as we were in the very closest, dearest, pleasantest
part of the talk, comes up young Hotspur yonder, and whisks her away in
a polka. What have you and I to do with polkas, Lankin? He took her down
to supper--what have you and I to do with suppers?"

"Our duty is to leave them alone," said the philosophical Serjeant.
"And now about breakfast--shall we have some?" And as he spoke, a
savory little procession of stewards and stewards' boys, with drab tin
dish-covers, passed from the caboose, and descended the stairs to the
cabin. The vessel had passed Greenwich by this time, and had worked its
way out of the mast-forest which guards the approaches of our city.

The owners of those innumerable boxes, bags, oil-skins, guitar-cases,
whereon the letter K was engraven, appeared to be three ladies