“General Braddock, your honor, might have been advised by Colonel Washington.”
“Out upon your Washington! You're all provincials together, man, and uphold each other as if you were of a sworn confederacy.”
“I believe his majesty has no more loyal subjects than the Americans, your honor.”
“In that, Dunham, I'm thinking you're right; and I have been a little too warm, perhaps. I do not consider you a provincial, however, Sergeant; for though born in America, a better soldier never shouldered a musket.”
“And Colonel Washington, your honor?”
“Well!—and Colonel Washington may be a useful subject too. He is the American prodigy; and I suppose I may as well give him all the credit you ask. You have no doubt of the skill of this Jasper Eau-douce?”
“The boy has been tried, sir, and found equal to all that can be required of him.”
“He has a French name, and has passed much of his boyhood in the French colonies; has he French blood in his veins, Sergeant?”
“Not a drop, your honor. Jasper's father was an old comrade of my own, and his mother came of an honest and loyal family in this very province.”
“How came he then so much among the French, and whence his name? He speaks the language of the Canadas, too, I find.”