"
"That we will, and with pleasure, for the dust has well-nigh choked me. It
is a different thing drilling on this sandy ground from drilling on a
stretch of good turf. Of course, you will come back and lunch with us, and
bring your friend Herrara."
Herrara, however, excused himself. He did not know a word of English, and
felt that until he could make himself understood he would feel
uncomfortable at a gathering of English officers. After lunch Terence was
called upon to tell the story about his cousin. Among his friends of the
regiment he had no fear of his adventure with the bishop getting abroad,
and he therefore related the whole story as it happened.
"By my sowl," O'Grady said to him, afterwards, "Terence O'Connor, you take
me breath away altogether. To think that a year ago you were just a
gossoon, and here ye are a colonel--a Portuguese colonel, I grant, but
still a colonel--fighting Soult, and houlding defiles, and making night
attacks, and thrashing the French cavalry, and carrying off a nun from a
convent, and outwitting a bishop, and playing all Sorts of divarsions. It
bates me entirely. There is Dicky Ryan, who, as I tould him yesterday, had
just the same chances as you have had, just Dicky Ryan still. I tould him
he ought to blush down to his boots."
"And what did he say, O'Grady?"
"The young spalpeen had the impudence to say that there was I, Captain
O'Grady, just the same as when he first joined, and, barring the loss of
an arm, divil a bit the better.
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