"Sure, Terence, I knew well enough that you and Dicky Ryan would be back here, before long. And so you have taken him from us! Well, it is a relief to the regiment; and I only hope that now he is an adjutant he will learn manners, and behave with a little more discretion than he has ever shown before. How you could have saddled yourself with such a hare-brained lad is more than I can imagine."
"That is all very well, O'Grady," Ryan laughed, "but it is a question of the pot calling the kettle black; only in this case the pot is a good deal blacker than the kettle. There may be some excuse for a subaltern like me, but none for a war-scarred veteran like yourself."
"Dick will do very well, O'Grady," Terence said. "I can tell you he sits in his tent, and does his office work, as steadily as if he had been at it all his life; and if you had seen him drilling a battalion, you would be delighted. It is just jealousy that makes you run him down, O'Grady--you were too lazy to learn Portuguese, yourself."
"Is it lazy you say that I am, Terence? There is no more active officer in the regiment, and you know it. As for the heathen language, it is not fit for an honest tongue. They ought to have sent over a supply of grammars and dictionaries, and taught the whole nation to speak English.
"When did you get back?"
"A week ago; but we have been too busy drilling the regiment to come over, before.
"How are you getting on here, Colonel?"
"We are not getting on at all, O'Connor. It is worse than stationary we are. They ought to put on double the number of carts they allow us. Half the time we are on short rations; except wine which, thank Heaven, the commissariat can buy in the country. It is evil times that we have fallen upon, and how we shall do, when the snow begins to fall heavily, is more than I can tell you."
"At any rate, Colonel, from what I hear you are a good deal better off than the division at Guarda, for you are but a day's march from the river."
"The carts take two days over it," the colonel said, "and then bring next to nothing; for the poor bastes that draw them are half starved, and it is as much as they can do to crawl along. They might just as well keep the whole division at Abrantes, instead of sticking half of them out here, just as if the French were going to attack us now.