La Coruña, Battle of, La Coruña, Spain, 1809 -- Juvenile fiction; Moore, John, Sir 1761-1809 -- Juvenile fiction
Terence laughed. "I know I look a perfect scarecrow. Do you think that you
can find me something? I really don't know what I should have done if I
had not had my greatcoat, for I could never have ventured to walk through
the street from the little inn where I put up my horse, if I could not
have hidden myself in it."
"I can, fortunately, put you in the right way without difficulty. There is
a man here who has made a business of buying up uniforms. I believe he
sends most of them to England, where they would certainly fetch a good
deal more than he gave for them; but I know that he keeps a stock by him,
for there is a constant demand. The work out in the country here does for
a uniform in no time, and many men who, before marching for the frontier,
parted with all their extra kit for a song, are glad enough to write to
him for a fresh outfit at three times the price he gave them two or three
months before."
"I wonder they don't send their surplus outfit back to England direct,"
Terence said.
"Well, you see, there is the risk of the things being lost or stolen on
the way home, or being ruined by damp before they are wanted again.
Besides, a man thinks there is no saying whether he shall ever want them
again, or how long the war will last, and is glad to take anything he can
get to save himself any further bother about them."
Terence was fortunate in being able to buy an undress uniform, with
facings similar to those of his own regiment, and to lay in a stock of
underclothes at a very much lower price than he could have purchased them
for even at home. Before leaving the shop he put on his new uniform and
left the old one to be thrown away.
"Now," Captain Nelson said, when they left the shop, "it is just our lunch
time. You must come with me and tell us all about your wonderful march and
the fight at the end of it."
"I was going down to see about my horse."
"Oh, that is all right! I sent down an orderly to bring him up to our
stables. There, this is where we mess," he said, stopping before a hotel.
"We find it much more comfortable than having it in a room at
head-quarters. Besides, one gets away from duty here. Of course, the chief
knows where we are, and can send for us if we are wanted; but one gets off
being set to do a lot of office work in the evening, and we find ourselves
much more free and comfortable when we haven't got two or three of the
big-wigs of the staff. So they have a little mess of their own there, and
we have a room kept for ourselves here."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account