----"Now what can their two noddles be about?" cried my father - - &c. - - - -
I dare say, said my mother, they are making fortifications----
------Not on Mrs. _Wadman's_ premises! cried my father, stepping back----
I suppose not: quoth my mother.
I wish, said my father, raising his voice, the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, fausse-brays and cuvetts------
----They are foolish things----said my mother.
Now she had a way, which, by the bye, I would this moment give away my purple jerkin, and my yellow slippers into the bargain, if some of your reverences would imitate--and that was, never to refuse her assent and consent to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the principal word or term of art, upon which the tenet or proposition rolled. She contented herself with doing all that her godfathers and godmothers promised for her--but no more; and so would go on using a hard word twenty years together--and replying to it too, if it was a verb, in all its moods and tenses, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it.

'Now what can their two noddles be about?'
'I dare say,' said my mother, 'they are making fortifications.'
'Not on Mrs. Wadman's premises!' cried my father.
'I suppose not,' quoth my mother.
'I wish,' said my father, raising his voice, 'the whole science of fortification at the devil, with all its trumpery of saps, mines, blinds, gabions, and cuvetts-'
'They are foolish things,' said my mother.
Now my mother would never disagree to any proposition my father laid before her, merely because she did not understand it, or had no ideas of the meaning of the terms upon which the proposition rolled. She would go on using a hard word twenty years together, without giving herself any trouble to enquire about it.
