"Couldn't think of it." "Then," said I, "get yourself a cigar." I pointed to a stack of boxes.
"You'll find the Corona--Coronas the best." As I am not a millionaire I don't offer these Coronas to everybody.

I myself can only afford to smoke one or two a week.
When he had lit it he said: "I was led away from what I wanted to tell you,--my going to Aberdeen and plunging into the obscurity of a Scottish regiment.

I was absolutely determined that none of my friends, none of you good people, should know what an ass I had made of myself.
That's why I kept it from my mother.

She would have blabbed it all over the place." "But, my good fellow," said I, "why the dickens shouldn't we have known ?" "That I was making an ass of myself ?" "No, you young idiot!" I cried.

"That you were making a man of yourself." "I preferred to wait," said he, coolly, "until I had a reasonable certainty that I had achieved that consummation--or, rather, something that might stand for it in the prejudiced eyes of my dear friends.