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"Ike Smith," she says, "this is something like, isn't it? But ask Captain Dyer to have that breastwork strengthened there isn't half enough of it. Glad Bantem hasn't gone. But I say, only think of that poor woman! I saw her just now crying, fit to break her poor heart." "What poor woman?" I said, staring hard. "Why, the colonel's wife.
"Any one with them?" said Captain Dyer. "Could not see a soul, sir," said Joe Bantem, for he was one of the men.
He got saying that she was a nice girl, and would make a soldier as wanted one a good wife; when Mrs Bantem fires up as spiteful as could be I think, mind you, there'd been something wrong with the cooking that day, which had turned her a little and she says that Lizzy was very well, but looks weren't everything, and that she was raw as raw, and would want no end of dressing before she would be good for anything; while, as to making a soldier's wife, soldiers had no business to have wives till they could buy themselves off, and turn civilians.
But there was one there who did hear them, and she told me afterwards, sobbing as though her heart would break. "Poor Harry, poor light-hearted Harry," Mother Bantem said.
Then Joe Bantem was sent, though he hung back for his wife, till she ordered him on, to go over with a soldier's child on his back; and he was followed by a couple more.
He revived then a bit; and as Captain Dyer and Mrs Bantem between them were attending to, and binding up his wounds, he told us how he had been set upon ten miles off, and been obliged to fight his way back; and, poor chap, he had fought; for there were no less than ten lance-wounds in his arms, thighs, and chest, from a slight prick up to a horrible gash, deep and long enough, it seemed to me, to let out half-a-dozen poor fellows' souls.
"I think we can let 'em know what's what though, my lads, if they come here," he says, with a grim smile; when Mrs Bantem, whose breath seemed quite taken away before by the way he talked, jumped up quite happy-like, laid her great hand upon his left side, and then, turning to us, she says: "It's beating strong." "What is?" says Bantem, looking puzzled.
The first inkling I had of the difficulty of this was seeing Captain Dyer and Harry Lant stagger, and fall forward; but they were saved by the men, and we saw directly that they must be carried. No sooner thought of than done. "Hoist Harry on my back," says Grainger; and he took him like a sack; Bantem acting the same part by Captain Dyer; and those two ran off, while we tried to cover them.
I saw them both colour up fierce; but the next minute Harry Lant bursts out laughing, and Measles does the same, and then they two did what I should think they never did before they shook hands; but Mrs Bantem had no sooner turned away with tears in her eyes, because she felt so cross, than the two chaps fell out again about some stupid thing or another, and kept on snarling and snapping at each other all along the march.
Joe Bantem laughed; and soon after we were all making, in spite of threatened trouble and disappointment, an uncommonly hearty dinner, for, if there ever was a woman who could make a good curry, it was Mrs Bantem; and many's the cold winter's day I've stood in Facet's door there in Bond Street, and longed for a plateful.
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