Mrs.McGillicuddy's majestic figure was seen approaching from the region back of the dining-room, and she had heard the Sergeant's remark about the C.O.'s office being a day nursery.
"And it's you, Patrick McGillicuddy," cried Mrs.McGillicuddy, sailing into the office, "the father of eight children, complaining of this sweet blessed lamb." "D' ye mean the naygur ?" asked McGillicuddy.
Mrs.McGillicuddy, scorning to reply, seized the baby, and with Kettle following marched out.

It was not really judicious for the After-Clap to be taken into the C.O.'s office.
The Sergeant began meekly to straighten up his desk, and Colonel Fortescue, coming in later to glance over the evening newspaper, found McGillicuddy gazing meditatively at the Articles of War, lying in a volume on the table.
The Sergeant was not the modern educated non-com, with an eye to a commission, but an old-timer, unlearned in books, but an expert in handling men and horses.
"What is it, Sergeant ?" asked the C.O.
"Just this, sir," replied the Sergeant respectfully, "I was thinkin' a man ought to be mighty keerful when he picks out a wife." "Certainly," replied the Colonel, gravely, who had exercised no forethought at all, after once falling under the spell of Betty Beverley's laughing eyes.
"When I got married I didn't act rash at all, sir, because I'm by nature a timid man," continued the Sergeant, who was a valiant man, and free.

"I went to a palmist and paid him a dollar for my horrorscope.
I told him I wanted a little woman, about my size, who would follow me around like a poodle dog.

The palmist, he said, sir, he seen a little woman in my hand as would follow me around like a poodle dog.

Then I went to a reg'lar fortune teller, and she told me the same thing, for a dollar.