"I hope, Dicky, we sha'n't find, when we get back in the spring, that the corps has been turned over to Beresford as part of his regular command; for I must say that I quite appreciate the advantage of independence.
"Well, this business ought to do us some good. No doubt the major will report, in warm terms, the assistance we have rendered him; and we shall get good treatment. Of course, some of their prisons must be better than others and, if they will confine us in some place near the frontier, instead of marching us half through France, it will make it all the easier for us to get away. It is not the getting out of prison that is the difficulty, but the travelling through the country. I am getting on well with my French, but there is no hope of being able to speak well enough to pass as a native. As for you, you will have to keep your mouth shut altogether, which will be mightily difficult."
"You will manage it somehow, Terence. I have no fear of you getting me through the country. It is getting out of the country that seems, to me, the difficulty."
"There is one thing, Dicky. We need be in no hurry about it. There is little chance of fighting beginning for another six or seven months and, directly we come to the end of our march, wherever it may be, we must begin to pick up as much French as we can, from our guards. In three or four months I ought, at least, to be able to answer questions; not perhaps in good French, but in French as good as, say, a Savoyard workman or musician might be able to muster."
"Oh, Lor'!" Dick Ryan said, with a deep sigh, "you don't mean to say that I must begin to work on another language, just after I have been slaving, for the last six months, at Portuguese?"
"Not unless you like, Dicky. I can either start alone, or with someone else who has some knowledge of French; but I am not going to run the risk of being recaptured by taking anyone with me who cares so little for liberty that he grudges three or four hours' work, a day, to get up the means of making his escape."
"Oh, of course I shall learn," Ryan said pettishly. "You always get your own way, Terence. It was so at Athlone: you first of all began by asking my opinion, and then carried out things exactly as you proposed, yourself. Learning the language is a horrid nuisance, but I see that it has to be done."
"I expect, Dicky, you will have to make up as a woman. You see, you are not much taller than a tallish woman."
"Well, that would be rather a lark," Ryan said; "only don't you think I should be almost too good-looking for a French woman?"
"You might be that, Dicky. It is certainly a drawback. If I could get hold of a good-sized monkey's skin, I might sew you up in it."