There was never much danger of invasion. I only wish the villains
would have tried it. Horatia, would you like to see your godfather at
work? I hope not. Young ladies should be peaceful."
"Then I am not peaceful at all," cried Dolly, who was sitting by the
maimed side of her "Flapfin," as her young brother Johnny had nicknamed
him. "Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very
low people find to do? There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general,
or even a captain, or--well, a boy to beat the drums."
"But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia," her elder sister Faith
replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; "and the admirals and the
generals would have to be--"
"Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even
worse--nasty lawyers." Then Dolly (whose name was "Horatia" only
in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of
seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.
"That last cut was meant for me," Frank Darling, the eldest of the
family, explained from the opposite side of the table. "Your lordship,
though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to know or remember
all the little particulars of our race. We are four, as you know; and
the elder two are peaceful, while the younger pair are warlike. And I
am to be the 'nasty lawyer,' called to the bar in the fullness of
time--which means after dining sufficiently--to the great disgust of
your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me
shot.
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