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Beginning from the left, we have barely two army corps actually present of the British contingent in the fighting line: for certain contingents of the outermost army corps had not yet arrived. We may perhaps call the numbers actually present at French's command when contact was taken 70,000 men, but that is probably beyond the mark.
Directly after breakfast she went out with her father, going first of all to French's bank, where Raeburn had to change a circular note. "It is upstairs," he said as they reached the house. "Don't you trouble to come up; you'll have stairs enough presently at the Uffizzi." "Very well," she replied, "I will wait for you here."
At Mons they had halted, hoping that here was the spot to administer to von Kluck, beating upon their front, the final check. The hope was futile. Looking back upon the day with knowledge of what General French's army faced a knowledge largely denied to him it seems that the British escape from annihilation was miraculous.
He was rapidly making up his mind to enter, when Colonel French's carriage, drawn by a pair of dashing bays and driven by a Negro in livery, dashed up to the door and discharged Miss Graciella Treadwell, radiantly beautiful in a new low-cut pink gown, with pink flowers in her hair, a thin gold chain with a gold locket at the end around her slender throat, white slippers on her feet and long white gloves upon her shapely hands and wrists.
"No, but I ought to have remembered that he was the new owner, and have asked him. I never thought. Mother, what does 'prosecuted according to law' mean?" "I don't know, I'm sure, Danny. But if this is so, there's only one thing to be done. You must go straight to Mr. Walters and tell him all about it." "Mother, I don't dare to. He is a dreadfully hard man. Sam French's father says "
This done, she carefully dried the parts thus diligently washed with the handkerchief which she usually wore about her head. Then pinning shawls about their heads, she had her children ready for their departure, and gave them into Mrs. French's charge, sobbing aloud as if she might never see them more. "Well," said the doctor, as he drove rapidly away, "we're well out of that.
The Germans had their own shambles, more frightful, we were told, than ours, and thousands of dead lay in front of our lines when the tide of their attack ebbed back and waves of living men were broken by the fire of our field-guns, rifles, and machine-guns. Sir John French's staff estimated the number of German dead as from eight to nine thousand.
The Chinaman, who was sitting inside the cook wagon, poring over a book by the light of a lantern, recognised the note of fury in French's tone and raised his head, startled. A paroxysm of fear seized him.
'Perhaps not, said the other, rather relieved at not having to maintain the analogy any further; 'but, then, the beauty of being a junior officer is that one doesn't have to worry. I wouldn't be in old man French's shoes for a million quid, but for us subaltern johnnies it looks as if we'll have some great sport.
It is this failure to carry out any intelligible plan which the historian must regard as the unpardonable military fault on the National side. Sumner's Second Corps was now approaching the scene of action, or rather two divisions of it, Sedgwick's and French's, for Richardson's was still delayed till his place could be filled by Porter's troops.