"Why, if there was always peace, what on earth would any but very low people find to do?
There could scarcely be an admiral, or a general, or even a captain, or--well, a boy to beat the drums." "But no drum would want to be beaten, Horatia," her elder sister Faith replied, with the superior mind of twenty-one; "and the admirals and the generals would have to be--" "Doctors, or clergymen, or something of that sort, or perhaps even worse--nasty lawyers." Then Dolly (whose name was "Horatia" only in presence of her great godfather) blushed, as befitted the age of seventeen, at her daring, and looked at her father.
"That last cut was meant for me," Frank Darling, the eldest of the family, explained from the opposite side of the table.

"Your lordship, though so well known to us, can hardly be expected to know or remember all the little particulars of our race.

We are four, as you know; and the elder two are peaceful, while the younger pair are warlike.

And I am to be the 'nasty lawyer,' called to the bar in the fullness of time--which means after dining sufficiently--to the great disgust of your little godchild, whose desire from her babyhood has been to get me shot." "LITTLE, indeed! What a word to use about me! You told a great story.
But now you'll make it true." "To wit--as we say at Lincoln's Inn--she has not longed always for my death in battle, but henceforth will do so; but I never shall afford her that gratification.

I shall keep out of danger as zealously as your lordship rushes into it." "Franky going on, I suppose, with some of his usual nonsense," Admiral Darling, who was rather deaf, called out from the bottom of the table.
"Nobody pays much attention to him, because he does not mean a word of it.