"I-ah-why, because everybody uses one," he replied.
"I thought it was only women who did that kind of thing—followed a fashion for fashion's sake," she said, with some little contempt.
The next morning the captain descended without his eye-glass, and Miss Hastings smiled as she noticed it.
Another of his affectations was a pretended inability to pronounce his "t's" and "r's."
"Can you really not speak plainly?" she said to him one day.
"Most decidedly I can," he replied, wondering what was coming next.
"Then, why do you call 'rove' 'wove' in that absurd fashion?"
The captain's face flushed.
"It is a habit I have fallen into, I suppose," he replied. "I must break myself of it."
"It is about the most effeminate habit a man can fall into," said Miss Darrell. "I think that, if I were a soldier, I should delight in clear, plain speaking. I cannot understand why English gentlemen seem to think it fashionable to mutilate their mother tongue."