“You shwing first, old cock, at any rate,” the grenadier answered, with a graceful sweep of the door and the pendent major.
“Oh Lorraine, Lorraine,” cried the latter, as the arc of his revolution brought him face to face with Hilary; “for heaven’s sake, stop these miscreants—ah, you can do nothing, I see—you are hit badly, my poor boy.”
“My friend,” said Hilary to the grenadier, with that persuasive grace which even the costermongers could not resist; “you are much too good a soldier to make a laughing-stock of a brave British officer. I cannot attempt to use force with you, for you are lucky enough to be unwounded. Thank God for that, and release your prisoner—remember he is not a Frenchman, but a brave and good English major.”
With these, and perhaps some more solid persuasions, he obtained the relief of his senior officer, who for some moments could scarcely speak, through excitement and exhaustion. But he made signs to Hilary that he had something to say of great importance, and presently led him into a narrow archway.
“There will be vile work done in that house,” he contrived at last to tell Hilary; “the men were bad enough at Rodrigo, but they will be ten times worse to-night. We are all so scattered about that no man has his own officer near him, and he don’t care a button for any others. It was for trying to restrain some scoundrels of the Fifth Division that I was treated in that cursed way. Only think how we should feel, Lorraine, if our own daughters were exposed so!”
“I haven’t got any daughters,” said Hilary, groaning with pain, perhaps at the thought. “But I’d drive my sword through any man’s heart—that is to say, if I had got any sword, or any arm to drive it with.” His sword had been carried away by a grapeshot, and his right arm hung loose in a cluster of blood; for he had nothing to bind it up with.
“You are a man, though a wounded man,” the Major replied, being touched a little by Hilary’s strength of expression, inasmuch as he had two nice pretty daughters, out of harm’s way in England: “it is most unlucky that you are hit so hard.”
“That is quite my own opinion. However, I can hold out a good bit, Major, for any work that requires no strength.”
“Do you know where to find any of our own fellows? They would be quite ready to fight these blackguards; they are very sore about the way those scoundrels stole into the town. We have always been the foremost hitherto. Your legs are all right, I suppose, my boy.”
“All right, except that I am a trifle light-headed, and that always flies to the legs—or at least we used to say so at Oxford.”