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Updated: June 22, 2025
'I'll walk forty times more, an' forty on top av that, ye shovel-futted clod-breakin' infantry lance-corp'ril. "Before I cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. 'Will that content you? sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. 'Content! sez I. 'For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove.
Aftherwards I was well pleased I kept my fistes home. Then our Captain Crook Cruik-na-bul-leen came up. He'd been talkin' to the little orf'cer bhoy av the Tyrone. 'We're all cut to windystraws, he sez, 'but the Tyrone are damned short for noncoms. Go you over there, Mulvaney, an' be Deputy-Sergeant, Corp'ral, Lance, an' everything else ye can lay hands on till I bid you stop.
He launched into a lurid account of a border hill-scuffle that his regiment had been engaged in relating all its ghastly details with great gusto. "Cleared me lance-point ten times that d'y," he remarked laconically. "Flint was aour Orf'cer Commandin' Old 'Doolally Flint' 'ard old 'ranker' 'e wos. 'E'd worked us sumphin' crool that week. Night marches an' wot not.
'Twas the sword hangin' on the tentpole changed my will. "Can't I help, Sorr?" sez I; "'tis a strong man's job they've given you, an' you'll be wantin' help by sundown." He was a bhoy wid bowils, that child, an' a rale gintleman. "Sit down," sez he. "Not before my orf'cer," sez I; an' I tould him fwhat my service was. "I've heard av you," sez he. "You tuk the town av Lungtungpen nakid."
"I'm a dishgraced man!" sez the little orf'cer bhoy. "Put me undher arrest, Sorr, if you will, but, by my sowl, I'd do ut again sooner than face your mother wid you dead," sez the Sargint that had sat on his head, standin' to attention an' salutin'. But the young wan only cried as tho' his little heart was breakin'. 'Thin another man av the Tyrone came up, wid the fog av fightin' on him.
"Don't shoot," said he to the men round him; "like as not you'll 'it me. I'll catch the beggar livin'." Simmons ceased shouting for a while, and th noise of trap-wheels could be heard across the plain. Major Oldyne, Commanding the Horse Battery, was coming back from a dinner in the Civil Lines; was driving after his usual custom that is to say, as fast as the horse could go. "A orf'cer!
"An' there's our blessed Cap'n, ma'am," went on Bill, warming under the girl's happiness. "Gennelmun if ther' ever wuz. Sees me, he do, a roarin', ragged, bacca-chawin' ol' swab, an' I ses to him, 'Giv 's a job, an' he up an' makes me a bloomin' orf'cer! Me, as never knowed nuthin' 'cept drawin' me grog rations twice. Missy, there's a man for ye.
I wud ha' rolled out his face wid the butt av my gun before permittin' av him to steal the gurl. Saints knew av he wud ha' married her, and av he didn't she wud be in great tormint, an' the divil av a "scandal." But I niver sthruck, niver raised me hand on my shuperior orf'cer; an' that was a merricle now I come to considher it.
He cut Peg Barney as near as might be on the oi that I'd squshed whin we first met. Peg wint spinnin' acrost the tent. "Peg him out, Sorr, sez I, in a whishper. "Peg him out! sez me orf'cer bhoy, up loud, just as if 'twas battalion p'rade an' he pickin' his wurrds from the Sargint.
"I don't believe mother ever did," said Huldah, "she never told me so, anyway," and she burst into bitter sobs; "but there wasn't anybody else there, and they told the parish orf'cer that I was their little girl, and then they went away as fast as they could, and took me with them." "Are they kind to you?"
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