CHAPTER VII.
THE POOR WOUNDED HUSSAR.
It is small wonder that Mr. Picton Smith was full of anger. His castlehad been invaded and desecrated, his authority as proprietor defied,his children insulted and abused. As a magistrate he felt bound totake notice both of the outrage and of the theft of his property. As afather he could not easily forget the plight in which his threechildren had appeared before him.
But in his schemes of vengeance he reckoned without that distinguishedmilitary officer, General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith. For thissoldier had been promoted on his bed of sickness. He had readsomewhere that in his profession (as in most others) success quiteoften bred envy and neglect, but that to the unsuccessful, promotionand honour were sometimes awarded as a sort of consolationsweepstakes. So, having been entirely routed and plundered by theenemy, it came to Hugh John in the watches of the night--when, as heput it, "his head was hurting like fun" that it was time for him totake the final step in his own advancement.
So on the next morning he announced the change in his name and styleto his army as it filed in to visit him. The army was on the wholequite agreeable.
"But I'm afraid I shall never remember all that, Mr.General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith!" said Priscilla.
"Well, you'd better!" returned the wounded hero, as truculently as hecould for the bandages and the sticking-plaster, in which he wasswathed after the fashion of an Egyptian mummy partially unwrapped.
"What a funny smell!" piped Toady Lion. "Do field-marshals _all_ smelllike that?"
"Get out, silly!" retorted the wounded officer. "Don't you know that'sthe stuff they rub on the wounded when they have fought bravely?That's arnicay!"
"And what do they yub on them when they don't fight bravely?"persisted Toady Lion, who had had enough of fighting, and who in hisheart was resolved that the next time he would "yun away" as hard ashe could, a state of mind not unusual after the _zip-zip_ of bulletsis heard for the first time.
"First of all they catch them and kick them for being cowards. Thenthey shoot at them till they are dead; and may the Lord have mercy ontheir souls! Amen!" said General Smith, mixing things for theinformation and encouragement of Sir Toady Lion.
Presently the children were called out to go and play, and the woundedhero was left alone. His head ached so that he could not read. Indeed,in any case he could not, for the room was darkened with the intentionof shielding his damaged eyes from the light. General Napoleon couldonly watch the flies buzzing round and round, and wish in vain that hehad a fly-flapper at the end of a pole in order to "plop" them, as heused to do all over the house in the happy days before JanetSheepshanks discovered what made the walls and windows so horrid withdead and dying insects.
"Yes; the squashy ones _were_ rather streaky!" had been the words inwhich Hugh John admitted his guilt, after the pole and leathernflapper were taken from him and burned in the washhouse fire.
Thus in the semi-darkness Hugh John lay watching the flies with thestealthy intentness of a Red Indian scalper on the trail. It was sadto lie idly in bed, so bewrapped and swathed that (as he mournfullyremarked), "if one of the brutes were to settle on your nose, youcould only wait for him to crawl up, and then snatch at him with yourleft eyelid."
Suddenly the disabled hero bethought himself of something. First,after listening intently so as to be quite sure that "the children"were outside the bounds of the house, the wounded general raisedhimself on his elbow. But the effort hurt him so much thatinvoluntarily he said "Outch!" and sank back again on the pillow.
"Crikey, but don't I smell just!" he muttered, when, after one breathof purer air, he sank back into the pool of arnica vapour. "I supposeI'll have to howl out for Janet. What a swot!"
"Janet!--Ja-a-a-a-net!" he shouted, and sighed a sigh of relief tofind that at least there was one part of him neither bandaged nordrowned in arnica.
"Deil tak' the laddie!" cried Janet, who went about her work all daywith one ear cocked toward the chamber of her brave sick soldier;"what service is there in taking the rigging aff the hoose wi' yournoise? Did ye think I was doon at Edam Cross? What do ye want,callant, that ye deafen my auld lugs like that? I never heard sic aladdie!"
But General Smith did not answer any of these questions. He well knewJanet's tone of simulated anger when she was "putting it on."
"Go and fetch _it_!" he said darkly.
The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith Page 8