Kephalomancy. Divination by the crackling of a donkey's head when burnt.

She's too quarrelsome to participate in a civil conversation.

Our excursion to Topsham would, we supposed, prove a very disagreeable business to him, but we knew it would result very agreeably for us, and so, though with a good deal of maidenly compunction and grand-daughterly compassion on Julia’s part, we out-voted him.

[…] a few inches of the erect spar yet visible, together with long streaming yards of the flag, which calmly undulated, with ironical coincidings, over the destroying billows they almost touched.