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
Conversation,' and there, upon my honour, the second sentence I read was
'_Lady Smart_,' (mark _that_--'LADY!') 'What, you are sick of
the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay?' So my good old yellow
letter-writer ('I.' or 'T.' Tresham, I can't decide what he signs
himself)--_you_ were, no doubt, exact here as in other matters, and _I_
was determining the probable and the impossible, unphilosophically, by
the _rule_ of m