"Aren't you ashamed of yourselves, you two, quarrelling over a silly old battle, that every one else has now forgotten? One would think you were heathens, and not Christians at all, to hear you talk in that sanguinary style." The girl's voice was deep, but very clear and full, and there was a curious timbre in it that somehow lingered in one's memory--it was so suggestive of sweetness and pathos. "Are you fery well, Miss Ward? Ah, it is always a good thing when one has the joke ready,"--and Sergeant McGill's tone was full of dignity,--"but it is not quarrelling that we are after, Miss Ward--only a little difference of opinion." "Yes, I know. But what does it matter, McGill, how many of those poor wretches you killed?" But she might as well have spoken to the wind. "It was three, Miss Ward," returned McGill, obstinately; "and if you had seen the sight that Jack and I saw you would not be calling them poor, for they were the devil's sons, every one of them, and their hearts was black as sin, and it was the third man that I got by the throat; and when Jack came up----" But here the girl shrugged her shoulders, and a little frown came to her face. "Yes, I know, but please spare me those horrible details," and then she laughed again; but there were tears in her eyes. "I daresay there were more than three if the truth were known. Corporal, why do you vex him with contradiction? If you were in another part of the field how could you know what he did?" "Ah, it is the goot English that Miss Ward speaks," murmured McGill; but Corporal Marks struck in. "Hold your tongue, McGill--you are like a woman for argifying--argle-barking, as Sergeant Drummond calls it--from noon to night. This was how it was, Miss Ward. Our company was scattered, and I found myself suddenly in the corner of the rice-field where McGill was. There was a barricade of dead Sepoys round him, and he had his foot on one of them, and had got another by the throat; and then----" But a peremptory gesture stopped him. "Thank you, I have heard enough; but I am inclined to take McGill's part, for how could you see clearly in all that smoke and crowd? Come, let us change the subject. I owe you sixpence for those flowers that you brought yesterday, for my sister tells me that she never paid for them." "No, Miss Ward, and there was no sixpence owing at all. I left the flowers with my duty." "Ah, but that is nonsense, Corporal," returned the young lady quickly. "I will not rob you of all your lovely flowers." "It's not robbing, Miss Ward," replied McGill, in his soft thick voice. "It is a pride and pleasure to Jack that you take the flowers, for it is the goot friend you have been to us, and the books you have read, and the grand things you have told us, and what are roses and dahlias compared to that?"