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
married life was known intimately for nineteen years, "Mrs.
McGillicuddy keeps all the soldiers' wives satisfied and is a boon to
the regiment."

"That's so, sir," the Sergeant agreed, "and the chaplain, he
compliments her on the way she marches them eight children and me to
the chapel every Sunday, rain or shine, me havin' the right of the
line, Missis McGillicuddy herself bein' the rear guard, the line
properly dressed, no stragglers, everything done soldier-like. But
Missis McGillicuddy don't follow me around like a poodle dog, as the
palmist, and the mind reader, and the dream book said she would. She's
hell-bent--excuse me sir--on havin' her own way all the time."

Just then a vision flitted past the door. It was Anita, dressed for
dinner, in a filmy gown of pale blue and white, the colors of the
Blessed Damozel. A light came into Colonel Fortescue's eyes as they
rested on this darling of his heart. The Sergeant had a pretty
daughter, Anna Maria by name, who was just Anita's age and of whom the
Sergeant was extravagantly fond. The two fathers, the Colonel and the
Sergeant, exchanged intelligent glances. Often, in their twenty years
of daily association, they talked together about things of which they
never spoke to any other man.

"Anna Maria is a fine girl," said the Colonel.