And _this_ is the way they dance it,' cried she, in a louder tone; and capering backward with a bounce, and an air, and a grace, she came with a sort of a courtesy, and a smart bump, and a shock against the stately Miss Rebecca; and whisking round with a little scream and a look of terrified innocence, and with her fingers to her heart, to suppress an imaginary palpitation, dropped a low courtesy, crying-- 'I'm blest but I thought 'twas tall Burke, the gunner.' 'You might look behind before you spring backward, young gentlewoman,' said Aunt Becky, with a very bright colour.
'And you might look before you before you spring forward, old gentlewoman,' replied Miss Mag, just as angry.
'Young ladies used to have a respect to decorum,' Aunt Becky went on.
'So they prayed me to tell you, Madam,' replied the young lady, with a very meek courtesy, and a very crimson face.
'Yes, Miss Mac--Mag--Madam--it used to be so,' rejoined Aunt Rebecca, ''twas part of my education, at least, to conduct myself in a polite company like a civilised person.' '"I wish I could see it," says blind Hugh,' Magnolia retorted; 'but 'twas a good while ago, Madam, and you've had time to forget.' 'I shall acquaint your mother, Mrs .-- Mug--Mac--Macnamara, with your pretty behaviour to-morrow,' said Miss Rebecca.
'To-morrow's a new day, and mother may be well enough then to hear your genteel lamentation; but I suppose you mean to-morrow come never,' answered Magnolia, with another of her provoking meek courtesies.
'Oh, this is Lieutenant Puddock,' said Aunt Becky, drawing off in high disdain, 'the bully of the town.

Your present company, Sir, will find very pretty work, I warrant, for your sword and pistols; Sir Launcelot and his belle!' 'Do you like a belle or beldame best, Sir Launcelot ?' enquired Miss Mag, with a mild little duck to Puddock.
'You'll have your hands pretty full, Sir, ha, ha, ha!' and with scarlet cheeks, and a choking laugh, away sailed Aunt Rebecca.
'Choke, chicken, there's more a-hatching,' said Miss Mag, in a sort of aside, and cutting a flic-flac with a merry devilish laugh, and a wink to Puddock.

That officer, being a gentleman, was a good deal disconcerted, and scandalised--too literal to see, and too honest to enjoy, the absurd side of the combat.
'Twas an affair of a few seconds, like two frigates crossing in a gale, with only opportunity for a broadside or two; and when the Rebecca Chattesworth sheered off, it can't be denied, her tackling was a good deal more cut up, and her hull considerably more pierced, than those of the saucy Magnolia, who sent that whistling shot and provoking cheer in her majestic wake.
'I see you want to go, Lieutenant Puddock--Lieutenant O'Flaherty, I promised to dance this country dance with you; don't let me keep _you_, Ensign Puddock,' said Miss Mag in a huff, observing little Puddock's wandering eye and thoughts.
'I--a--you see, Miss Macnamara, truly you were so hard upon poor Miss Rebecca Chattesworth, that I fear I shall get into trouble, unless I go and make my peace with her,' lisped the little lieutenant, speaking the truth, as was his wont, with a bow and a polite smile, and a gentle indication of beginning to move away.
'Oh, is that all?
I was afraid you were sick of the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay; you had better go back to her at once if she wants you, for if you don't with a good grace, she'll very likely come and take you back by the collar,' and Miss Mag and O'Flaherty joined in a derisive hee-haw, to Puddock's considerable confusion, who bowed and smiled again, and tried to laugh, till the charming couple relieved him by taking their places in the dance.
When I read this speech about the 'mulligrubs,' in the old yellow letter which contains a lively account of the skirmish, my breath was fairly taken away, and I could see nothing else for more than a minute; and so soon as I was quite myself again, I struck my revising pen across the monstrous sentence, with uncompromising decision, referring it to a clerical blunder, or some unlucky transposition, and I wondered how any polite person could have made so gross a slip.

But see how authentication waits upon truth! Three years afterwards, I picked up in the parlour of the 'Cat and Fiddle,' on the Macclesfield Road, in Derbyshire, a scrubby old duodecimo, which turned out to be an old volume of Dean Swift's works: well, I opened in the middle of 'Polite Conversation,' and there, upon my honour, the second sentence I read was '_Lady Smart_,' (mark _that_--'LADY!') 'What, you are sick of the mulligrubs, with eating chopt hay ?' So my good old yellow letter-writer ('I.' or 'T.' Tresham, I can't decide what he signs himself)--_you_ were, no doubt, exact here as in other matters, and _I_ was determining the probable and the impossible, unphilosophically, by the _rule_ of my own time.

And my poor Magnolia, though you spoke some years--thirty or so--later than my Lady Smart, a countess for aught I know, you are not so much to blame.