“Oh, of course. That’s right enough, but it only means to be rolled back again. Now, look here, my boy; you have got your message to deliver.”
“Yes, yes, I know,” cried Marcus, despairingly.
“And you are a bit disappointed because it’s not done. Everything’s bad, you say. It’s been all misfortune since we started, and we may as well give up at once.”
“Well, isn’t it all true?” cried Marcus, as he stood unconsciously caressing one of the chariot horses as the pair stood ready to make another dash at a moment’s notice, their driver busying himself the while with seeing to and examining the different parts of the harness.
“True! Hardly a bit of it,” cried Serge. “I ought to give you a good drilling and bullying for what you said; but somehow I can’t, for we have had some very hard work, and all through you have been such a brave boy.”
“Oh, nonsense, Serge! You are only saying that to comfort me. You will praise me so.”
“Oh no I won’t,” said the old soldier, gruffly. “I won’t give you a bit more than’s good for you, boy. When I say you have done well it means you have done well. You won’t get any flattery out of me. All this trouble that we are going through is no more than you must expect. Look what we are doing, and how we stand.”
Serge was sitting down on a stone, busily employed as he talked polishing and sharpening his sword as it lay across his knees, and he did not trouble himself to look up at his young companion, but kept on lecturing him in a bluff, good-humoured way, smiling to himself with satisfaction all the time.
“Now here we are, trying to overtake our army, which had some days the start of us. If I say what you think isn’t right, you stop me. Well, our army has invaded the country of these Gallic tribes. The Gauls are no fools. They know Caius Julius has come to conquer them, and they don’t want to be conquered. Their idea is to invade Rome and conquer us. Well, my boy, we have come into their country, and every man who can fight has been called upon to come and fight against us, so that like a big crop in a cultivated land, what has been planted has come up all over. And this crop is fighting men with swords and spears. Now we—you and me and the driver, and we ought to put the horses in, bless ’em, for they’ve done wonders—have come after the army, marching through this bristling crop, and you, without taking any account of what a hard job it is to get through, keep on grumbling and saying everything is bad.”
“And so it is, Serge.”