not glad to see the Major. He was a little, pussy, red-faced,
pop-eyed man, pompous as a banty rooster, with black whiskers and a
mustache like a cat. He had a voice on him like barrels rolling in
a brewery vault. It would surprise you quite a little to hear that
number ten voice come a-roarin' out of that number two man. The
Major used to corral everything he wanted and say, 'Charge it!' two
octaves below a bull's beller, Bein' a military person, he was fond
of charges; me and Hadds, bein' plain civilians, weren't. We
charged it and we charged it, but that there Major's defenses were
impregnerville. I had told Hadds that the next time Pumpey said
'Charge it' I was goin' to take him at his word, then and there,
and rush him along on his ear till I felt better. But, of course,
now his wife was along I couldn't.

"She was just as different from the Major as anything could be: a
tall, pale, rangey woman, kind-hearted and good-natured as they
make 'em, but with a pair of nose-grabber specks, and a way of
letting her hands flop at the wrist, whilest she talked in a high
gobbley-gobble style, like singin' a tuneless tune. They made a
pair to draw to. The Lord only knows what you'd got if you filled.
My! And the general effect of that lady! She wore her hair in an
omelet, and looked as if she'd been put in her clothes by a boiler
explosion.

"There was another powerful difference between them two. The Major
he gazed on the wine when it was any color at all. He didn't care
so much for decoration as he did for quantity. He passed his time
in bein' tee'd, tee-heed, or teeterin'. On the other hand, his
lady couldn't stand plain raw water. Honest, friends and brothers!
I ain't stringin'! I have it on the word of their striker that