"'Bucks, he said himself.'
"'He was maybe born in both counties for all you know.'
"'Alethea,' with a cough and reproving look.
"'At any rate Oi saw him riding in a steeplechase in the spring of '67, at Aldershot.'
"'It must, I think, have been '66. We were at Gibraltar in '67. Please be accurate.'
"'Bother your accuracy, for ye are driving the pigs through my story. Well, Oi was telling ye about the steeplechase Jimmy Brook rode. It was a mile, and he had led for half, and so he was just four hundred yards from the post.'
"'A half would be eight hundred and eighty yards.'
"'Oi wish from my heart that geography, arithmetic, memory, and accuracy, and every other work of Satan were drowned with Moses in the Red Sea. Go, for any sake, and bring me a glass of irritated water.'"
"Capital," cried the General. "I heard that myself, or something like it. Pettigrew was a tiresome wretch, but he was devoted to his wife in his own way."
"Which was enough to make a woman throw things at him, as very likely Alethea did when they were alone. What a fool he was to bother about facts; the charm of Lithy was that she had none—dates and such like would have made her quite uninteresting. The only dates I can quote myself are the Rebellion and the Mutiny, and I 'll add the year we came home. I don't like datey women; but then it's rather cheap for one to say that who does n't know anything," and Kate sighed very becomingly at the contemplation of her ignorance.