CHELSEA BUNS.
"Yea, buns, and buns, and buns!"
Old Song.
"How very, very sad!" exclaimed Clara; and the eyes of the gentle girl filled with tears as she spoke.
"Sad—but very curious when you come to look at it arithmetically," was her aunt's less romantic reply. "Some of them have lost an arm in their country's service, some a leg, some an ear, some an eye——"
"And some, perhaps, all!" Clara murmured dreamily, as they passed the long rows of weather-beaten heroes basking in the sun. "Did you notice that very old one, with a red face, who was drawing a map in the dust with his wooden leg, and all the others watching? I think it was a plan of a battle——"
"The battle of Trafalgar, no doubt," her aunt interrupted, briskly.
"Hardly that, I think," Clara ventured to say. "You see, in that case, he couldn't well be alive——"
"Couldn't well be alive!" the old lady contemptuously repeated. "He's as lively as you and me put together! Why, if drawing a map in the dust—with one's wooden leg—doesn't prove one to be alive, perhaps you'll kindly mention what does prove it!"
Clara did not see her way out of it. Logic had never been her forte.