With a look of scorn, she put into my hand a bit of paper, and took another partner. On the paper was pencilled, 'Heavens! Can I write the word? Is my husband a cow?'
In the first bewilderment of my heated brain, I tried to think what slanderer could have traced my family to the ignoble animal mentioned above. Vain were my endeavours. At the end of that dance I whispered the colonel to come into the cloak-room, and I showed him the note.
'There is a syllable wanting,' said he, with a gloomy brow.
'Hah! What syllable?' was my inquiry.
'She asks, can she write the word? And no; you see she couldn't,' said the colonel, pointing out the passage.
'And the word was?' said I.
'Cow - cow - coward,' hissed the pirate-colonel in my ear, and gave me back the note.