The reason for Kettle's boldness was in sight. Mrs. McGillicuddy's
majestic figure was seen approaching from the region back of the
dining-room, and she had heard the Sergeant's remark about the C. O.'s
office being a day nursery.

"And it's you, Patrick McGillicuddy," cried Mrs. McGillicuddy, sailing
into the office, "the father of eight children, complaining of this
sweet blessed lamb."

"D' ye mean the naygur?" asked McGillicuddy.

Mrs. McGillicuddy, scorning to reply, seized the baby, and with Kettle
following marched out. It was not really judicious for the After-Clap
to be taken into the C. O.'s office.

The Sergeant began meekly to straighten up his desk, and Colonel
Fortescue, coming in later to glance over the evening newspaper, found
McGillicuddy gazing meditatively at the Articles of War, lying in a
volume on the table.

The Sergeant was not the modern educated non-com, with an eye to a
commission, but an old-timer, unlearned in books, but an expert in
handling men and horses.

"What is it, Sergeant?" asked the C. O.

"Just this, sir," replied the Sergeant respectfully, "I was thinkin' a
man ought to be mighty keerful when he picks out a wife."

"Certainly," replied the Colonel, gravely, who had exercised no
forethought at all, after once falling under the spell of Betty
Beverley's laughing eyes.

"When I got married I didn't act rash at all, sir, because I'm by
nature a timid man," continued the Sergeant, who was a valiant man, and
free. "I went to a palmist and paid him a dollar for my horrorscope.
I told him I wanted a little woman, about my size, who would follow me
around like a poodle dog. The palmist, he said, sir, he seen a little
woman in my hand as would follow me around like a poodle dog. Then I
went to a reg'lar fortune teller, and she told me the same thing, for a
dollar. And I went to a mind reader, the seventh daughter of a seventh
daughter, and she promised me the little woman, too. I bought a dream
book and there was the same little woman again, sir. Within a
fortnight after all this I met Araminta Morrarity, as is now Missis
Patrick McGillicuddy, and she is six-foot-two-and-three-quarters inches
in height, and tipped the scale then at a hundred and ninety-six
pounds--and I'm the lightest man in the regiment. Missis McGillicuddy
has been a good wife, sir--I ain't sayin' a word about that, sir."

"I should think not," replied Colonel Fortescue, to whom the Sergeant's