He drove a friendly punch at Gordon's ribs. "Layers of it. What you need is a nice, hard campaign, my boy, to take some of it off."
"Not a chance of it! We'll be in Paris a month from now. I'll give you a dinner at a little restaurant I know there they have the best Chambertin in the whole city."
"I shall hold you to that. Where is it? I thought I knew all the restaurants in Paris."
"Ah, you don't know this one! It's in the Rue de - Rue de - confound it, I forget the name of the street, but I shall find it quick enough. Hallo, here's the Green Baby!"
Lieutenant the Honourable George Cathcart, lately enrolled as an extra aide-de-camp, had come into the room. He owed his appointment to the Duke's friendship with his father, the British Ambassador at St Petersburg. He was only twenty-one years old, but during the period of Lord Cathcart's office as military commissioner to the Russian Army, he had acted as his aide-de-camp, and was able to reply now with dignity "I am not a green baby. I have seen eight general actions. And what's more," he added, as the two elder men laughed, "Napoleon commanded in them all!"
"One to you, infant," said Audley. "You have us on the hip."
"Do you think Boney knows he's with us?" said Gordon anxiously.
"Oh, not a doubt of it! He has his spies everywhere."
"Ah, then, that accounts for him holding off so long: He's frightened."
"Oh, you - you -!" Cathcart sought for a word sufficiently opprobrious to describe Sir Alexander, and could find none.