"The force!" said Mrs. Sniff. "Don't let us have you talking about
force, for Gracious' sake. There! Do stand still where you are, with
your back against the wall."

He is a smiling piece of vacancy, and he smiled in the mean way in which
he will even smile at the public if he gets a chance (language can say no
meaner of him), and he stood upright near the door with the back of his
head agin the wall, as if he was a waiting for somebody to come and
measure his heighth for the Army.

"I should not enter, ladies," says Our Missis, "on the revolting
disclosures I am about to make, if it was not in the hope that they will
cause you to be yet more implacable in the exercise of the power you
wield in a constitutional country, and yet more devoted to the
constitutional motto which I see before me,"--it was behind her, but the
words sounded better so,--"'May Albion never learn!'"

Here the pupils as had made the motto admired it, and cried, "Hear! Hear!
Hear!" Sniff, showing an inclination to join in chorus, got himself
frowned down by every brow.

"The baseness of the French," pursued Our Missis, "as displayed in the
fawning nature of their Refreshmenting, equals, if not surpasses,
anythink as was ever heard of the baseness of the celebrated Bonaparte."

Miss Whiff, Miss Piff, and me, we drored a heavy breath, equal to saying,
"We thought as much!" Miss Whiff and Miss Piff seeming to object to my
droring mine along with theirs, I drored another to aggravate 'em.