"Truly you are a proper man, master," replied Mildred. "But it is hardly a time," she continued, half muttering to herself, "for you and me, Henry, to wear light hearts in our bosoms."
"Why, sister," said Henry, with some astonishment in his looks, "this seems to me to be the very time to practise my signals. We are at the very tug of the war, and every man that has a sword, or bugle either, should be up and doing."
"How come on your studies, brother?" interrupted Mildred, without heeding Henry's interpretation of his duty.
"Oh, rarely! I know most of the speeches of Coriolanus all by heart:—
"'Like an eagle in a dove cote, I
Fluttered your voices in Corioli:
Alone I did it.—Boy!'"
he spouted, quoting from the play, and accompanying his recitation with some extravagant gestures.
"This is easy work, Henry," said Mildred laughing, "there is too much of the holiday play in that. I thought you were studying some graver things, instead of these bragging heroics. You pretended to be very earnest, but a short time ago, to make a soldier of yourself."
"Well, and don't you call this soldiership? Suppose I were to pounce down upon Cornwallis—his lordship, as that fellow Tyrrel calls him—just in that same fashion. I warrant they would say there was some soldiership in it! But, sister, haven't I been studying the attack and defence of fortified places, I wonder? And what call you that? Look now, here is a regular hexagon," continued Henry, making lines upon the gravel walk with a stick, "here is the bastion,—these lines are the flank,—the face,—the gorge: here is the curtain. Now, my first parallel is around here, six hundred paces from the counterscarp. But I could have taken Charleston myself in half the time that poking fellow, Clinton, did it, if I had been there, and one of his side, which—thank my stars—I am not."
"You are entirely out of my depth, brother," interrupted Mildred.
"I know I am. How should women be expected to understand these matters? Go to your knitting, sister: you can't teach me."