And it would have been hard to find fairer marks when they came down dressed for dinner.
Mrs.Twemlow arrived with her daughter Eliza, but without her husband, who was to fetch her in the evening; and Mrs.Stubbard came quite alone, for her walkable children--as she called them--were all up at the battery.

"Can't smell powder too young in such days as these," was the Captain's utterance; and, sure enough, they took to it, like sons of guns.
"I should be so frightened," Mrs.Twemlow said, when Johnny (who sat at the foot of the table representing his father most gallantly) had said grace in Latin, to astonish their weak minds, "so nervous all the time, so excessively anxious, the whole time that dreadful din was proceeding! It is over now, thank goodness! But how can you have endured it, how can you have gone about your household duties calmly, with seven of your children--I think you said--going about in that fiery furnace ?" "Because, ma'am," replied Mrs.Stubbard, who was dry of speech, and fit mother of heroes, "the cannons are so made, if you can understand, that they do not shoot out of their back ends." "We are quite aware of that"-- Miss Twemlow came to her mother's relief very sharply--"but still they are apt to burst, or to be overloaded, or badly directed, or even to fly back suddenly, as I have heard on good authority." "Very likely, miss, when they are commanded by young women." Eliza Twemlow coloured, for she was rather quick of temper; but she did not condescend to pay rudeness in kind.
"It would hardly be a lady-like position, I suppose," she answered, with a curve of her graceful neck--the Carnes had been celebrated for their necks, which were longer than those of the Darlings; "but even under the command of a most skilful man, for instance Captain Stubbard, little accidents will happen, like the fall of a shell upon the beach this afternoon.

Some people were close to it, according to the rumour; but luckily it did not explode." "How providential!" cried Mrs.Twemlow; "but the stupid people would have gone without much pity, whatever had befallen them, unless they were blind, or too ignorant to read.

Don't you think so, Faith, my dear ?" "I don't believe a single word of that story," Mrs.Stubbard cut short the question; "for the simple reason that it never could have happened.
My husband was to direct every gun himself.

Is it likely he would have shelled the beach ?" "Well, the beach is the proper place for shells; but if I had only known it, wouldn't I have come a few hours earlier ?" said Johnny.