D'Hubert, on the contrary, became very pale at the sound of the
unsavoury word for a moment, then flushed pink to the roots of his
fair hair. "But you can't go out to fight; you are under arrest, you
lunatic!" he objected, with angry scorn.
"There's the garden: it's big enough to lay out your long carcass in,"
spluttered the other with such ardour that somehow the anger of the
cooler man subsided.
"This is perfectly absurd," he said, glad enough to think he had found a
way out of it for the moment. "We shall never get any of our comrades to
serve as seconds. It's preposterous."
"Seconds! Damn the seconds! We don't want any seconds. Don't you worry
about any seconds. I shall send word to your friends to come and bury
you when I am done. And if you want any witnesses, I'll send word to the
old girl to put her head out of a window at the back. Stay! There's the
gardener. He'll do. He's as deaf as a post, but he has two eyes in his
head. Come along! I will teach you, my staff officer, that the carrying
about of a general's orders is not always child's play.
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