"I knows when you is bullyraggin' me an' say you is goin' to sen' me back to Virginia, you is jes' jokin'.

You done tole me that too oftin, Miss Betty, an' you ain't never give me no ticket yet, an' 'tain't nothin' but a sign you is comin' roun', Miss Betty." Kettle's grin was so seductive and his reasoning so correct that Mrs.
Fortescue suddenly laughed, too; there was no way short of putting Kettle in handcuffs and leg-irons to keep him from obeying the After-Clap, whose orders were _orders_ to Kettle.
In the afternoon Colonel Fortescue, sitting in his office, from which not even Christmas Day exempted him, saw, a long way off, down by the non-coms' quarters, a pitiful sight.

Mrs.McGillicuddy had carried out her menace to put a buggy in the Sergeant's Christmas stocking.

The buggy was at the Sergeant's door, and in it sat Mrs.McGillicuddy, elaborately dressed, a picture hat and feathers on her carefully frizzed hair and her voluminous draperies nearly swamping the little Sergeant cowering in the corner of the buggy.

To it was hitched the milkman's mare, which was about as big as a large rabbit and owned up to twenty-three years of age and the name of Dot.