“You have forgotten, Colonel Merivale, to send in the name of the officer who saved General Laborde’s life.”
“I believe I have mentioned it, Sir Arthur,” said the colonel: “Mr. O’Malley.”
“True, I beg pardon; so you have—Mr. O’Malley; a very young officer indeed,—ha, an Irishman! The south of Ireland, eh?”
“No, sir, the west.”
“Oh, yes! Well, Mr. O’Malley, you are promoted. You have the lieutenancy in your own regiment. By-the-bye, Merivale,” here his voice changed into a half-laughing tone, “ere I forget it, pray let me beg of you to look into this honest fellow’s claim; he has given me no peace the entire morning.”
As he spoke, I turned my eyes in the direction he pointed, and to my utter consternation, beheld my man Mickey Free standing among the staff, the position he occupied, and the presence he stood in, having no more perceptible effect upon his nerves than if he were assisting at an Irish wake; but so completely was I overwhelmed with shame at the moment, that the staff were already far down the lines ere I recovered my self-possession, to which, certainly, I was in some degree recalled by Master Mike’s addressing me in a somewhat imploring voice:—
“Arrah, spake for me, Master Charles, alanah; sure they might do something for me now, av it was only to make me a ganger.”
Mickey’s ideas of promotion, thus insinuatingly put forward, threw the whole party around us into one burst of laughter.
“I have him down there,” said he, pointing, as he spoke, to a thick grove of cork-trees at a little distance.
“Who have you got there, Mike?” inquired Power.