And that your friend Francis must have been the hero who complains so grievously of Taffy the Welshman, whose house was doubtless situated in a field of barley, while his making a dreadful racket is quite according to the ancient notions of what he did with the marrow-bone.'
'Oh! there is Papa looking in at us,' said Anne; 'now for the question of pennon and pennant.'
'Oh! Anne, it is all nonsense,' cried Helen; 'do not shew it.'
But Anne, with Helen's paper in her hand, had already attacked Sir Edward, who, to the author's great surprise, actually read the poem all through, smiling very kindly, and finished by saying, 'Ah ha! Helen, it is plain enough that your friends are naval. I can see where your pennant came from.'
'But is it not a flag, Uncle Edward?' asked Helen.
'A flag it is,' said Sir Edward, 'and properly called and spelt pendant.'
'There, Helen, you are an antidote to the hydrophobia,' said Rupert; 'everything becomes—'
'Do not let us have any more of that stale joke,' said Elizabeth; 'it is really only a poetical license to use a sea-flag for a land-flag, and Helen had the advantage of us, since we none of us knew that Pennant signified anything but the naturalist.'
'And pray, Helen,' said Sir Edward, 'am I to consider this poem as an equivalent for the music you have cheated us of, this evening?'
'I hope you will consider that it is,' said Elizabeth; 'is it not positively poetical, Uncle Edward?'