As the first troop, having got all their horses and baggage ashore, marched up towards the camp, Jack saw the regiment was one of Hussars, and as they were passing him he heard his name shouted out, ‘Blair, Blair, shure it’s the bhoy himself;’ and, looking up at the trumpeter who rode behind the officer leading the troop, Jack saw the roguish eye and laughing features of Larry O’Callaghan.
‘Hallo!’ cried Jack, ‘I didn’t know this was your regiment.’
‘You can always reckon that the ould 8th are where there’s work to be done,’ said Larry. ‘Come and hunt me up when ye’ve a minute, and tell us all about this land of haythens.’
Directly Jack was free he went over to the Hussars’ lines. ‘And how are you, Larry?’ he said, shaking the Irish trumpeter’s hand.
‘Never so happy in all me loife,’ replied Larry. ‘And how ‘a that little mare that jolly nearly cooked your pigs for you at Chobham?’
Jack’s face fell when he spoke of Dainty, and he told Larry what had happened.
The Hussar gave an angry exclamation. ‘Bad cess to that Napper; he ‘s a baste,’ he cried. ‘But there, on active service ye need never be bothered for long with a man who bullies ye.’
‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.
Larry looked round him cautiously. ‘I mane,’ he said, ‘that ye should have heard some of the tales me ould grandfather used to tell of his fighting days in the Peninsula and then ye’d understand what I mane.’
The men of the 8th fraternised jovially with the 17th, the most friendly relations having always existed between them. The two regiments lay close beside one another, and Larry came over in the evening to see Jack. They were talking with Will Pearson and one or two others when Sergeant Linham was seen approaching.