The good old veteran was hurt at her appearance, which, in the hurry of preparation, her grandmother had omitted to notice.
"What is come over you, you silly girl ?" he said; "why, you look like an officer's wife when she opens the News-letter after an action, and expects to find her husband among the killed and wounded.

But I know the reason--you will persist in reading these nonsensical romances, day and night, and whimpering for distresses that never existed.

Why, how the devil can you believe that Artamines, or what d'ye call him, fought singlehanded with a whole battalion?
One to three is as great odds as ever fought and won, and I never knew any body that cared to take that, except old Corporal Raddlebanes.

But these d--d books put all pretty men's actions out of countenance.

I daresay you would think very little of Raddlebanes, if he were alongside of Artamines .-- I would have the fellows that write such nonsense brought to the picquet for leasing-making." [Note: Romances of the Seventeenth Century.