“Send me back to our friend there with a message as sharp as a sword. Of course I know he will not send him across to the Boers.”
“My dear Val,” said Denham solemnly, “let me inform your ignorance exactly what would happen. I know the chief from old experience. He’ll sit back and listen to you with one of those pleasant smiles he puts on when he’s working himself up into a rage. He’ll completely disarm you—as he did me once—and all the time, as he hears you patiently to the end, he’ll think nothing about my lord Paddy there, but associate you, my poor boy, with what he will consider about the most outrageous piece of impudence he ever had addressed to him. Then suddenly he’ll spring up and say— No, I will not spoil the purity of the atmosphere this beautiful evening by repeating a favourite expletive of his—he’ll say something you will not at all like, and then almost kick you out of his quarters.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“That’s giving me the lie, Val, my boy. He’ll be in such a rage that he’ll forget himself; for, though he’s a splendid soldier, and as brave a man as ever crossed a charger, he is one of the—”
“What, Mr Denham?” said the gentleman of whom he spoke, suddenly standing before us. “Pray speak out; I like to hear what my officers think of me.”
Chapter Thirty Two.
Denham Shivers.
I wanted to dash off—not from fear, but to indulge in a hearty roar of laughter—for Denham’s countenance at that moment wore the drollest expression I have ever seen upon the face of man.