Dreadnought

And people tended not to bother a woman with a book.

It's funny what they say about men in uniform - how people think women just can't resist 'em. Fact is, I think we're just pleased to see a man groomed, bathed, and wearing clothes that fit him.

It was a train full of strangers, and they were all the same.

He smiled when he talked, a smile that was not completely cold, but was the professional smile of a man who spends his days answering easy questions for people whom he’d rather usher out of his office via catapult.

Oh, it doesn't work at all. That's the problem! It's an endless, halting parade of inspections, bribes, and nonsense—but if you're aboard a Texas vessel, you'll find less inconvenience along the way." "It's because of their guns!" declared Mr. Henderson, once more escaping his reverie, bobbing out of it as if to gasp for air. "Concise, my love." Mrs. Henderson gave him a smile. "And correct. Texans are heavily armed and often impatient. They don't need to be transporting arms and gunpowder to create a great nuisance for anyone who stops them, so they tend to be stopped…less often.

The captain strikes me as a competent officer, and competent officers are never given enough information to work with.

I don't think I've ever met any Mexicans before." "They're tyrants, and imperialists, every last one of them." If he'd been holding any more tobacco in his lip, he no doubt would've used it to chase the sentence out of his mouth. "And I guess you've talked to every last one of them, to be so sure of that.

Now it was growing late again, and cooler, which the nurse found disorienting. It felt as though her entire life had been lived from dusk to dawn ever since she learned of Phillip, only tiptoeing around the edges of sunset or sunrise, and sleeping or traveling all day.

That ought to make his face, or the sound of his voice, more precious to her mind, but strangely, this wasn’t so. What was left in his absence was an empty, sorrowful discomfort. She wondered if it wouldn’t eventually grow dull or dim if she worried at it enough, or softened and more

palatable. Easier to overlook. Forgotten, or at least smoothed into some pearl-like blandness, if not a thing of beauty.