How old are you, sir?"
"I was sixteen six months ago."
"And I was sixteen three days ago," she said. "Fancy your commanding two
thousand soldiers and only six months older than I am."
"It is not I, it is the uniform," Terence said. "They obey me when they
won't obey their own officers, because I am on the English general's
staff. They know that we have thrashed the French, and that their own
officers know nothing at all about fighting, and they have no respect
whatever for them. More than that, they despise them because they know
that they are always intriguing, and that really, although they may be
called generals, they are but politicians. You will see, when they get
English officers to discipline them, they will turn out capital soldiers;
but they think so little of their own, that if anything goes wrong their
first idea is that their officers must be traitors, and so fall upon them
and murder them.
"You look older than I do, Mary. You seem to me quite a woman, while, in
spite of my uniform and my command, and all that, I am really only a boy."
"I suppose I am almost a woman, Terence, but I don't feel so. You see out
here girls often marry at sixteen. I know father said once that he hoped I
shouldn't marry until I was eighteen, and that he wanted to keep me young.
I never thought about getting almost a woman until the bishop told me one
day that if I chose to marry a senor that he would choose for me, he would
get me absolution from my vows, and that I need not then resign my
property.
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