"What?" said Rawdon, rather surprised, but took the humour of the phrase, and presently wrote it down with a grin.
"Which very possibly may be fatal, I have come hither—"
"Why not say come here, Becky? Come here's grammar," the dragoon interposed.
"I have come hither," Rebecca insisted, with a stamp of her foot, "to say farewell to my dearest and earliest friend. I beseech you before I go, not perhaps to return, once more to let me press the hand from which I have received nothing but kindnesses all my life."
"Kindnesses all my life," echoed Rawdon, scratching down the words, and quite amazed at his own facility of composition.
"I ask nothing from you but that we should part not in anger. I have the pride of my family on some points, though not on all. I married a painter's daughter,
