They had not been together for a full minute when the stout general threw back his head, looking straight in his face; and then he stepped first one, then another, fat little pace backward, and poked his cane right at the ribs of the plump little lieutenant, then closing with him, he shook both Puddock’s hands in both his, with a hearty peal of laughter.

Then he took Puddock under his arm.  Puddock had to stoop to pick up his hat which the general had dislodged.  And so the general walks him slowly towards the house; sometimes jogging his elbow a little under his ribs; sometimes calling a halt and taking his collar in his finger and thumb, thrusting him out a little, and eyeing him over with a sort of swagger, and laughing and coughing, and whooping, and laughing again, almost to strangulation; and altogether extraordinarily boisterous, and hilarious, and familiar, as Cluffe thought, who viewed this spectacle from the avenue.

Mr. Sterling would not have been quite so amused at a similar freak of Mrs. Hidleberg’s—­but our honest general was no especial worshipper of money—­he was rich, too, and his daughter, well dowered, was about to marry a peer, and beside all this, though he loved ‘Sister Becky,’ her yoke galled him; and I think he was not altogether sorry at the notion of a little more liberty.

At the same moment honest Peter Brien, having set his basket of winter greens down upon the kitchen-table, electrified his auditory by telling them, with a broad grin and an oath, that he had seen Lieutenant Puddock and Aunt Rebecca kiss in the garden, with a good smart smack, ’by the powers, within three yards of his elbow, when he was stooping down cutting them greens!’ At which profanity, old Mistress Dorothy, Aunt Rebecca’s maid, was so incensed that she rose and left the kitchen without a word.  The sensation there, however, was immense; and Mistress Dorothy heard the gabble and laughter fast and furious behind her until she reached the hall.

Captain Cluffe was asking for Aunt Rebecca when Puddock and the general reached the hall-door, and was surprised to learn that she was not to be seen.  ’If she knew ‘twas I,’ he thought, ‘but no matter.’

‘Oh, we could have told you that; eh, Puddock?’ cried the general; ’’tisn’t everybody can see my sister to-day, captain; a very peculiar engagement, eh, Puddock?’ and a sly wink and a chuckle.

Cluffe smiled a little, and looked rather conscious and queer, but pleased with himself; and his eyes wandered over the front windows hastily, to see if Aunt Becky was looking out, for he fancied there was something in the general’s quizzing, and that the lady might have said more than she quite intended to poor little Puddock on the subject of the gallant mediator; and that, in fact, he was somehow the theme of some little sentimental disclosure of the lady’s.  What the plague else could they both mean by quizzing Cluffe about her?