"Bravo!" I said, feeling compelled to back him up, though not desiring a quarrel. "That is what we are fighting for."
"And more than we shall get," added the colonel good-humouredly.
"Thanks to Kossuth's meddling!" said Stephen. "If he had left the general alone, we should be over the frontier by now."
"The young man carries messages for Görgei," the count explained to his associates in a tone of amusement. "That is how he comes to know so much about fighting."
"Even that gives more training than talking rubbish in a back room," I put in hotly, thinking of the scene at Vienna.
"Perhaps the count has come out of his shell since then," said Rakoczy, with a merry twinkle.
"It must have been to get into a safer one," exclaimed Stephen contemptuously.
The quarrel, like a fire, once started, blazed furiously, and but for a shaggy-haired German, we should speedily have come to blows.
He was puffing vigorously at a tremendous pipe, and, coming through the dense volume of smoke, his voice sounded like a fog-horn.
"Ach!" he grunted, "the quarrel is stupid; let it rest. The count has made his reputation with General Bern; he can afford to laugh. As for the boys, they seem very nice boys--ach!" and the oracle faded behind a cloud of smoke of his own construction. This was like a douche of cold water on the fire; but though the flames were put out, the embers smouldered, and presently sprang into a fresh blaze.