"Yes," continued the Captain, "think of being obliged to fight like that on two meals a week, the meals consisting of boiled horse and mouldy crackers, drinking the same swamp water you have been standing in all day! And I suppose you think that our regiment lost heavily, Colonel? Eh? Well, you are mistaken! We had the crack regiment and scarcely suffered at all, in comparison with some of the others. They took a tally the day before I left, and found eight sound eyes, twelve legs that were good for anything, and six usable arms, in the whole division."
"Oh good Lord! he will kill me!" cried the Colonel, starting at last to his feet and utterly unable to endure such torture one moment longer.
By this time Frank Wallace, carried away by the excitement of the lies he had already vented, and observing how horrified he had succeeded in making his auditor, began to get a little reckless, and concluded that it was time to play the indignant. The ladies had been in conversation on the opposite side of the room, the elder members delighted with the new acquaintance to whom Emily had introduced them in Josephine; and though it may be supposed that at least two of them kept their regards pretty closely directed to the "military" corner of the room, much of the past conversation had been carried on in so subdued a tone as to be drowned by their own. What followed, however, they could not very well avoid hearing.
As the Colonel staggered to his feet and attempted to get away, the pseudo-Captain managed to crutch-and-cane himself to a standing position and confronted his superior.
"That last remark was offensive!" he said, speaking so that all in the room could hear him.
"What is offensive? What do you mean, sir?" asked the poor Colonel, now having thorough surprise added to his other emotions.
"Why this, sir?" cried the Captain, letting his big cane come down on the floor with such a thump as he had observed at the hands of enraged East Indian uncles and heavy fathers in old comedies. "You said in so many words, sir, that I was a bore and a humbug, and I do not take that from any man, sir!"
"I said nothing of the kind!" disclaimed the Colonel, who certainly had not used any such expression.
"What did you mean, then, sir, by the offensive expression: 'Good Lord! he will kill me!' I have not fought for nothing, sir! I know what such words mean, and I would fight any man who used them, if I had only one arm and no leg to stand on!"
"Captain Slivers," said the Colonel, "you are unreasonable!"