THE RETREAT
O’Grady asked no questions, but presently whispered
to Terence: “Faith, ye did it well, me
boy.”
“Did what well, O’Grady?”
“You need not tell me about it, Terence.
I was expecting it. Didn’t I spake to ye
the day before about it, and didn’t I feel sure
that something would come of it? When that row
began last night, I looked at you hard and saw you
wink at that young spalpeen, Dicky Ryan; and sure all
the time that we were standing there, formed up, I
well-nigh burst the buttons off me coatee in holding
in me laughter, when everyone else was full of excitement.
“‘Are you ill, O’Grady?’ the
colonel said, for I had to sit meself down on some
steps and rock meself to and fro to aise meself.
‘Is it sick ye are?’ ‘A sudden pain
has saised me, Colonel,’ says I, ’but I
will be all right in a minute.’ ‘Take
a dram out of me flask,’ says he; something must
have gone wrong wid ye.’ I took a drink—”
“That I may be sure you did,” Terence
interrupted.
“—And thin told him that I felt better;
but as we marched down through the crowd and saw the
fright of the men, and the women screaming in their
night-gowns at the windows, faith, I well-nigh choked.”
“Have you spoken to Ryan about this absurd suspicion,
O’Grady?”
“I spoke to him, but I might as well have spoke
to a brick wall. Divil a thing could I get out
of him. How did you manage it at all, lad?”
“How could I manage it?” Terence said,
indignantly. “No, no, O’Grady; I
know you did make some remark about that scare at Athlone,
and said it would be fun to have one here. I
was a little shocked at hearing such a thing from,
as you often say, a superior officer, and it certainly
appears to me that it was you who first broached the
idea. So I have much more right to feel a suspicion
that you had a hand in the carrying of it out than
for you to suspect me.”
“Well, Terence,” O’Grady said, in
an insinuating way, “I won’t ask you any
questions now, and maybe some day when you have marched
away from this place, you will tell me the ins and
outs of the business.”
“Maybe, O’Grady, and perhaps you will
also confess to me how you managed to bring the scare
about.”
“Go along wid you, Terence, it is yourself knows
better than anyone else that I had nothing to do with
it, and I will never forgive you until you make a
clean breast of it to me.”
“We shall see about it,” Terence laughed.
“Anyhow, if you allude to the subject again,
I shall feel it my duty to inform the colonel of my
reasons for suspecting that you were concerned in
spreading those false reports last night.”
“It was first-rate, wasn’t it?”
Dick Ryan said, as he joined Terence, when the latter
left the mess-room.
“It was good fun, Dicky; but I tell you, for
a time I was quite as much scared as anyone else.
I never thought that it would have gone quite so far.
When it came to all the troops turning out, and Sir
John and everyone, I felt that there would be an awful
row if we were ever found out.”
