By-the-bye, Colonel L'Isle, I did not see
you take the least refreshment at Mrs. Shortridge's--not even half a
pound of sugarplums, like the Portuguese ladies."
"I followed your example; for you yourself fasted."
"I was too busy talking my best and my last to my Portuguese friends,"
said Lady Mabel. "But when and where did you dine?"
"Dine?" said L'Isle, hesitating, then recollecting his luncheon;
"about two o'clock, in Badajoz."
"A Spanish dinner, I'll warrant, at a Spaniard's house!" she
exclaimed, throwing up her hands.
"You must be faint with hunger. Why," she added, taking up a light,
and holding it close to him, "you do look pale and famished; as if you
had dined like a Portuguese beggar's brat,--on a crust, rubbed over
with a _sardinha_, to give it a flavor. I cannot let you go away in
this condition. If you starve yourself so, you will degenerate from a
beef-eating red-coat, into a rationless Spanish soldier."
"There is no danger of that," L'Isle answered. "But how do you happen
to have a supper ready at this hour?"
"It shows what a slave of habit Moodie is. Because he has a supper got
for papa and his friends every night, he could not omit it; though
papa is far away, and he knows that I never touch it.
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