“Not so badly, Major. I have already got a step in promotion. The affair at the Douro gave me a lieutenancy.”
“I wish you joy with all my heart. I’ll call you captain always while you’re with me. Upon my life I will. Why, man, they style me your Excellency here. Bless your heart, we are great folk among the Portuguese, and no bad service, after all.”
“I should think not, Major. You seem to have always made a good thing of it.”
“No, Charley; no, my boy. They overlook us greatly in general orders and despatches. Had the brilliant action of to-day been fought by the British—But no matter, they may behave well in England, after all; and when I’m called to the Upper House as Baron Monsoon of the Tagus,—is that better than Lord Alcantara?”
“I prefer the latter.”
“Well, then, I’ll have it. Lord! what a treaty I’ll move for with Portugal, to let us have wine cheap. Wine, you know, as David says, gives us a pleasant countenance; and oil,—I forget what oil does. Pass over the decanter. And how is Sir Arthur, Charley? A fine fellow, but sadly deficient in the knowledge of supplies. Never would have made any character in the commissariat. Bless your heart, he pays for everything here as if he were in Cheapside.”
“How absurd, to be sure!”
“Isn’t it, though? That was not my way, when I was commissary-general about a year or two ago. To be sure, how I did puzzle them! They tried to audit my accounts, and what do you think I did? I brought them in three thousand pounds in my debt. They never tried on that game any more. ‘No, no,’ said the Junta, ‘Beresford and Monsoon are great men, and must be treated with respect!’ Do you think we’d let them search our pockets? But the rogues doubled on us after all; they sent us to the northward,—a poor country—”
“So that, except a little commonplace pillage of the convents and nunneries, you had little or nothing?”
“Exactly so; and then I got a great shock about that time that affected my spirits for a considerable while.”