She was in a high-falutin mood, and said she wished she had been christened Joan instead of Lettice, and that I would be a true Bayard; and that we could ride about the world together, dressed in armour, and fighting for the right.

And she would say all through the list of her favourite heroines, and asked me if I minded _their_ being peculiar, and I said of course not, why should you mind what women do who don't belong to you?
So she said she could not see that; and I said that was because girls can't see reason; and so we quarrelled, and I gave her a regular lecture, which I repeated to Uncle Patrick.
He listened quite quietly till my mother came in, and got fidgetty, and told me not to argue with my uncle.

Then he said-- "Ah! let the boy talk, Geraldine, and let me hear what he has to say for himself.

There's a sublime audacity about his notions, I tell ye.
Upon me conscience, I believe he thinks his grandmother was created for his particular convenience." That's how he mocks, and I suppose he meant my Irish grandmother.

He thinks there's nobody like her in the wide world, and my father says she is the handsomest and wittiest old lady in the British Isles.