He had been
heartily congratulated by the officers of the regiment.
"I am awfully glad that you are one of us, Terence," Dick Ryan said. "I
don't know what we should have done without you. I expect we shall have
tremendous fun in Portugal."
"I expect we shall, Dick; but we shall have to be careful. We shall be on
active service, you see, and from what they say of him I don't think Sir
Arthur Wellesley is the sort of man to appreciate jokes."
"No, I should say not. Of course, we shall have to draw in a bit. It would
not do to set the bells of Lisbon ringing."
"I should think not, Dick. Still, I dare say we shall have plenty of fun,
and at any rate we are likely, from what they say, to have plenty of
fighting. I don't expect the Portuguese will be much good, and as there
are forty or fifty thousand Frenchmen in Portugal, we shall have all our
work to do, unless they send out a much bigger force than is collecting at
Cork. It is a pity that the 10,000 men who have been sent out to Sweden on
what my father says is a fool's errand are not going with us instead. We
might make a good stand-up fight of it then, whereas I don't see that with
only 6,000 or 7,000 we can do much good against Junot's 40,000."
"Oh, I dare say we shall get on somehow!" Dick said, carelessly. "Sir
Arthur knows what he is about, and it is our turn to do something now.
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