Since the funeral, and especially since the inauguration of the delaine, Mrs. Marmaduke Splurge had been less alive to the necessity of improving the minds of her girls; and that virginal ten-dollar investment had provided Josephine, Adelaide, and Madeline with supplies of small arms and ammunition enough for a protracted campaign of epistolary belligerence, interrupted by hair-strokes of coquettish diplomacy.

His very failings are due to his soldierly faithfulness and loyalty, to his too ardent vigilance in guarding the threshold, to his officious belligerence towards other canines who offend his sense of proprietorship in his master.

"] Charming Billy, fumbling the latigo absently, felt a sudden belligerence toward her father.

Jane usually read tracts, and the professor did not feel religious; in fact he was conscious of an emotion of most unchristian belligerence.