A Soldier of Virginia: A Tale of Colonel Washington and Braddock's Defeat

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Mary Meehan, and the Project
Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
1901
It was not until he sneered at me openly across the board that I felt my self-control slipping from me. Lieutenant Allen seems to have a poor opinion of the Virginia troops, I said, as calmly as I could.
Egad, you are right, Lieutenant Stewart, he retorted, his eyes full on mine. These two weeks past have I been trying to beat some sense into the fools, and 'pon my word, 't is enough to drive a man crazy to see them.
He paused to gulp down a glass of wine, of which I thought he had already drunk too much.
I saw them this forenoon, cried Preston, who was sitting at Allen's right, and was like to die of laughing. Poor Allen, there, was doing his best to teach them the manual, and curse me if they didn't hold their guns as though they burnt their fingers. And when they were ordered to 'bout face, they looked like nothing so much as the crowd I saw six months since at Newmarket, trying to get their money on Jason.
The others around the table laughed in concert, and I could not but admit there was a grain of truth in the comparison.
'Tis granted, I said, after a moment, that we Virginians have not the training of you gentlemen of the line; but we can learn, and at least no one can doubt our courage.
Think you so? and Allen laughed an insulting laugh. There was that little brush at Fort Necessity last year, from which they brought away nothing but their skins, and damned glad they were to do that.
They brought away their arms, I cried hotly, and would have brought away all their stores and munitions, had the French kept faith and held their Indians off. That, too, in face of an enemy three times their number. The Virginians have no cause to blush for their conduct at Fort Necessity. The Coldstreams could have done no better.
Allen laughed again. Ah, pardon me, Stewart, he said contemptuously, I forgot that you were present on that glorious day.