And I went to a mind reader, the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter, and she promised me the little woman, too.

I bought a dream book and there was the same little woman again, sir.

Within a fortnight after all this I met Araminta Morrarity, as is now Missis Patrick McGillicuddy, and she is six-foot-two-and-three-quarters inches in height, and tipped the scale then at a hundred and ninety-six pounds--and I'm the lightest man in the regiment.

Missis McGillicuddy has been a good wife, sir--I ain't sayin' a word about that, sir." "I should think not," replied Colonel Fortescue, to whom the Sergeant's married life was known intimately for nineteen years, "Mrs.
McGillicuddy keeps all the soldiers' wives satisfied and is a boon to the regiment." "That's so, sir," the Sergeant agreed, "and the chaplain, he compliments her on the way she marches them eight children and me to the chapel every Sunday, rain or shine, me havin' the right of the line, Missis McGillicuddy herself bein' the rear guard, the line properly dressed, no stragglers, everything done soldier-like.

But Missis McGillicuddy don't follow me around like a poodle dog, as the palmist, and the mind reader, and the dream book said she would.