"
And that your friend Francis must have been the hero who complains so
grievously of Taffy the Welshman, whose house was doubtless situated
in a field of barley, while his making a dreadful racket is quite
according to the ancient notions of what he did with the marrow-
bone.'
'Oh! there is Papa looking in at us,' said Anne; 'now for the
question of pennon and pennant.'
'Oh! Anne, it is all nonsense,' cried Helen; 'do not shew it.'
But Anne, with Helen's paper in her hand, had already attacked Sir
Edward, who, to the author's great surprise, actually read the poem
all through, smiling very kindly, and finished by saying, 'Ah ha!
Helen, it is plain enough that your friends are naval. I can see
where your pennant came from.'
'But is it not a flag, Uncle Edward?' asked Helen.
'A flag it is,' said Sir Edward, 'and properly called and spelt
pendant.'
'There, Helen, you are an antidote to the hydrophobia,' said Rupert;
'everything becomes--'
'Do not let us have any more of that stale joke,' said Elizabeth; 'it
is really only a poetical license to use a sea-flag for a land-flag,
and Helen had the advantage of us, since we none of us knew that
Pennant signified anything but the naturalist.
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