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Updated: July 23, 2025
He stammered and broke down under the astounded gaze of the Cornal and the General, who stood to their feet facing his tense and thrilled small figure. A wave of shame-heat swept over him at his own boldness. Outside, the children's voices were fading in the distance as they turned the corner of the church singing "Pity be."
Miss Mary cast upon him a look he seldom got from her, of warmth more than kinship, but she had nothing to say; her voice was long dumb in that parlour where she loved and feared, a woman subjugate to a sex far less worthy than her own and less courageous. "Humph!" said the Cornal. He felt with nervous inquiry at his ragged chin, inspired for a second by old dreads of untidy morning parades.
"At sixteen he threw the cabar against the champion of the three shires, and though he was a sober man a bottle was neither here nor there with him," said the Cornal. Miss Mary was upon her knees. "The batteries are to open fire on San Vincent; seven eighteen-pounders and half a dozen howitzers are scarcely enough for that job. Tell Mackellar to move up two hundred yards farther on the right."
The lightest of novelles and the thinnest of ballants have something precious for a lad of his kind." The Cornal made no response; the issue was too trivial to keep him from his meditation.
The woman as well as the boy must have been lost in thought, for neither of them noted the step upon the stair when the General and Cornal came back from the dregy. The brothers were in the lobby beside them before Miss Mary realised their presence. She turned with a flushed face and, as it were, put herself a little in front of the boy, so that half his figure found the shelter of a wing.
It is give, give all the day in this house like Sergeant Scott's cantiniers." "Indeed and you need not complain of the giving," said Miss Mary: "there was nobody gave with a greater extravagance than yourself when you had it to give, and nobody sends more gangrels about the house than you." "Give the boy his meat and let him go," said the Cornal roughly.
Miss Mary put down her handkerchief impatiently and loaded Gilian at her side with embarrassing attentions. "What in all the world is his vexation?" mocked the Cornal in the Captain's high and squeaking voice, reddening at the face and his scar purpling. "That's a terribly stupid question to put, Jock. What in all the world is his vexation?
The Cornal screwed his lips firmly. "It's what I would call going altogether too far," he said. "I'm feared your recruit will affront us again. A song, now! did you ever know the like of it? I'll not put up with it! Did you say he was down with Miss Mary?" "I saw her laying the corner of the table," said the Paymaster, "and I'll warrant it was not to feed herself at this time of day."
When she speaks to me about him her face is lighted up like a day in spring, and I dare not say cheep to shatter her illusion." Gilian, alas! knew how little these old men now cared for him. The Cornal had long since ceased his stories; the Paymaster, coming in from his meridian in the Sergeant More, would pass him on the stair with as little notice as if he were a stranger in the street.
The Cornal stood listening to the story as one in a trance. There was a little silence when she had done, and he broke it with a harsh laugh. "Ah! and what is he going to make of this one?" he asked. "That's to be seen," said Miss Mary; "he spoke of the army." "Fancy that now!" said the Cornal with contempt. "Let me see him," he added suddenly. "Let me see the seeds of soldiery."
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