“Done.”
“Done—and I’ll dine with him too,” said Morris, as he started off on his poney. He trotted up to the General: taking off his hat in the most “official” manner,—“General,” said he, “I beg your pardon—I have to mention to you that my sick are without any comforts,[4]—they will be in a bad way if I cannot buy something for them; and I have no money at all.”
“Well, Mr. Quill, that is a very unfortunate thing. How much money will be enough for you?”
“Oh! about 20 dollars, Sir; and if you will lend that sum to me, I will give you an order on Cox and Greenwood for the money; which you can send over, and it will be just the same thing to you.”
“Very well, Mr. Quill. Come to my quarters, and you shall have the money.”
Morris jogged off with the General about two miles to his quarters; and during the time they were going, the General found him a very pleasant and humorous fellow. Morris, as he was receiving the money, mentioned something about the scarcity of provisions, and concluded by saying, “Faith, General, I don’t know when I had a dinner, or even saw the ghost of one: there is a very savoury smell here, I can perceive; but that is a General thing, I suppose, in this quarter.”
The General without hesitation asked Morris to stay to dinner; and highly enjoyed his society during the evening.
It was eleven o’clock before he returned; when producing the cash, he convinced his friend and the other officers of his success; so they finished the night over a cigar and a bottle of ration grog.
Quill, during the whole time he served in the Peninsula, had a servant who was as whimsical and as humorous as himself. This servant, he used to say, was “the best caterer for a gentleman’s table in hard times, that ever came from Kerry.” And so he was; for Morris Quill had always a fowl or a sucking pig for dinner, when the rest of the officers (except those who dined with Morris) were obliged to be contented with a biscuit and a bit of hard beef. Indeed, so excellent a purveyor and cook was Dennis, that his master made it a practice to ask his friends to dine with him, without (of himself) knowing where the eatables were to come from. “Dennis,” he would say, “I am going to ask a couple of gentlemen to dine with me to-day—indeed I have asked them already. What have you got?”
“Oh musha! Docthor Quill, I don’t know that I have any thing, barrin’ a shouldther o’ vale and a hen or two.”