‘Oh, this is Lieutenant Puddock,’ said Aunt Becky, drawing off in high disdain, ’the bully of the town.  Your present company, Sir, will find very pretty work, I warrant, for your sword and pistols; Sir Launcelot and his belle!’

‘Do you like a belle or beldame best, Sir Launcelot?’ enquired Miss Mag, with a mild little duck to Puddock.

‘You’ll have your hands pretty full, Sir, ha, ha, ha!’ and with scarlet cheeks, and a choking laugh, away sailed Aunt Rebecca.

‘Choke, chicken, there’s more a-hatching,’ said Miss Mag, in a sort of aside, and cutting a flic-flac with a merry devilish laugh, and a wink to Puddock.  That officer, being a gentleman, was a good deal disconcerted, and scandalised—­too literal to see, and too honest to enjoy, the absurd side of the combat.

’Twas an affair of a few seconds, like two frigates crossing in a gale, with only opportunity for a broadside or two; and when the Rebecca Chattesworth sheered off, it can’t be denied, her tackling was a good deal more cut up, and her hull considerably more pierced, than those of the saucy Magnolia, who sent that whistling shot and provoking cheer in her majestic wake.

’I see you want to go, Lieutenant Puddock—­Lieutenant O’Flaherty, I promised to dance this country dance with you; don’t let me keep you, Ensign Puddock,’ said Miss Mag in a huff, observing little Puddock’s wandering eye and thoughts.

’I—­a—­you see, Miss Macnamara, truly you were so hard upon poor Miss Rebecca Chattesworth, that I fear I shall get into trouble, unless I go and make my peace with her,’ lisped the little lieutenant, speaking the truth, as was his wont, with a bow and a polite smile, and a gentle indication of beginning to move away.

’Oh, is that all?  I was afraid you were sick of the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay; you had better go back to her at once if she wants you, for if you don’t with a good grace, she’ll very likely come and take you back by the collar,’ and Miss Mag and O’Flaherty joined in a derisive hee-haw, to Puddock’s considerable confusion, who bowed and smiled again, and tried to laugh, till the charming couple relieved him by taking their places in the dance.

When I read this speech about the ‘mulligrubs,’ in the old yellow letter which contains a lively account of the skirmish, my breath was fairly taken away, and I could see nothing else for more than a minute; and so soon as I was quite myself again, I struck my revising pen across the monstrous sentence, with uncompromising decision, referring it to a clerical blunder, or some unlucky transposition, and I wondered how any polite person could have made so gross a slip.  But see how authentication waits upon truth!  Three years afterwards, I picked up in the parlour of the ‘Cat and Fiddle,’ on the Macclesfield Road, in Derbyshire, a scrubby old duodecimo, which turned out to be an old volume of Dean Swift’s works:  well, I opened in the middle of ’Polite