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In those days, when the shallow graves were being very quickly filled, the convalescent inmates of the hospital made the cemetery their favourite promenading ground, and it was here, upon a shining March Monday, that Polson and Major de Blacquaire encountered each other on their wanderings amid the tombs, the one on crutches, and the other painfully supporting his footsteps by the aid of a walking stick.
And if I hadn't struck on a pretty fat thing in the way of a contract for forage and horseflesh for these French chaps here, I should have been pretty well a bankrupt. But I found the money, and you're as well off as you would have been if old General Airey had never heard my name. 'That is good news to a poor man, said De Blacquaire.
The Earl of Barfield was particularly keen in his desire to run Mr. Ferdinand de Blacquaire for the county, and to run him into Parliament. Ferdinand himself was much less keen about the business, and regarded it all as a mingled joke and bore.
Major de Blacquaire scored the wet gravel with the crutch, looking frowningly down upon the ground, and Jervase scored the earth on his side with the neat brass ferrule. 'I don't quite see what I am to do with you, said the Major. 'It isn't the boy's fault that he has a rotter for a father, is it?
Polson had got a permanent crick in his neck from that bit of Russian lead which had caught him just as he dropped into the trench with De Blacquaire. In the course of time he began to carry it naturally, so that it looked like the merest little mannerism, but it could never have been handsome by any conceivable chance except in the eyes of a wife or a sweetheart.
De Blacquaire went stumping along on his crutches in the weak spring sunshine, and Polson and his father, by mere chance, were looking after him when he paused at the corner of the one important monument in the grounds, and raised his forage cap to some person as yet unseen.
'I wish you to understand, Major de Blacquaire, he said, 'that I am pressing this matter for reasons personal to myself. I am placed in a most abominable and unbearable position. I have unwittingly been made a partner in a very shameful transaction, and I may tell you that I have not the faintest doubt in my own mind as to the justice of your cause.
We've got no end of a find here. Whole pig. If you'll let me know where to find you, I've bagged a ham, and I'll invite myself to dine with you, and bring my own rations with me. 'Thaanks, said De Blacquaire. 'Don't trouble. I shall find it my duty to report this scene of riot and disorder. Forward. March. Grand rounds went by, and the scattered fire faded.
When we get you home again, my lad, well run you for the Southern Division of the county and you shall talk to 'em across the floor of the House of Commons. The three men reached the bows of the good boat and turned, and there was De Blacquaire before them with a weather-beaten servant holding him by the elbow and piloting him along the deck.
But I will let you off for the moment with what you have taken, and for the present I will say good evening to you. He drew on his gauntlet as he spoke, and turned his horse's head. 'Wait there, said De Blacquaire. 'I have just one word to say to you. You know that I could have you triced to the triangle and flogged? Polson nodded, but said nothing. His eyes spoke for him.
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