"Oh no, I wouldn't call him bad-tempered!" replied the Colonel. "He gets peevish, you know - a trifle crusty, when things don't go just as he wishes. I wish they may get Murray back from America in time to take this fellow Lowe's place: we can't have him putting old hookey out every day of the week: comes too hard on the wretched staff."
Judith gave him back his cup and saucer. "But, Charles, this is shocking! You depict a cross, querulous person, and we have been expecting a demi-god."
"Demi-god! Well, so he is, the instant he goes into action," said the Colonel. He drank his coffee, and said, 'Who is here, Worth? Any troops arrived yet from England?"
"Very few. We have really only the remains of Graham's detachment still, the same that Orange has had under his command the whole winter. There are the 1st Guards, the Coldstream, and the 3rd Scots; all 2nd battalions. The 52nd is here, a part of the 95th - but you must know the regiments as well as I do! There's no English cavalry at all, only that of the German Legion."
The Colonel nodded. "They'll come."
"Under Combermere?"
"Oh, surely! We can't do without old Stapleton Cotton's long face among us. But tell me! who are all these schoolboys on the staff, and where did they spring from? Scarcely a name one knows on the Quartermaster-General's staff, or the Adjutant-General's either, for that matter!"
"I thought myself there were a number of remarkably inexperienced young gentlemen calling themselves Deputy-Assistants - but when the Duke takes a lad of fifteen into his family one is left to suppose he likes a staff just out of the nursery. By the by, I suppose you know you have arrived in time to assist at festivities at the Hotel de Ville tonight? There's to be a fete in honour of the King and Queen of the Netherlands. Does the Duke go?"
"Oh yes, we always go to fetes!" replied the Colonel. "What is it to be? Dancing, supper - the usual thing? That reminds me: I must have some new boots. Is there anyone in the town who can be trusted to make me a pair of hessians?"
This question led to a discussion of the shops in Brussels, and the more pressing needs of an officer on the Duke of Wellington's staff. These seemed to consist mostly of articles of wearing apparel suitable for galas, and Lady Worth was left presently to reflect on the incomprehensibility of the male sex, which, upon the eve of war, was apparently concerned solely with the price of silver lace, and the cut of a hessian boot.