“It will be hot work, Denis; for we shall have the best troops of France against us, and Napoleon himself in command.”

“It’s little we care for the French, your honor.  Didn’t we meet them in Spain and bate them?  Sure, they are are hardly worth counting.”

“You will find them fight very much better now they have their emperor with them.  You know, Wellington had all his work to beat them.”

“Yes, but he did bate them, your honor.”

“That’s true enough, Denis; but his troops now are old soldiers, most of whom have been fighting for years, while a great part of our force will be no better than militia.”

“They won’t fight any the worse for that, your honor,” Denis said confidently.  “We will bate them whenever we meet them.  You see if we don’t.”

“We will try anyhow, Denis; and if all the regiments were as good as our own I should feel very sure about it.  I wish, though, we were going to fight by ourselves; we know what we can do, but we do not know how the Belgians and Dutch and Germans who will be with us can be depended upon.”

“If I were the duke I wouldn’t dipend on them at all, at all, your honor.  I would just put them all in the rare, and lave our fellows to do the work.  They are miserable, half-starved cratures all them foreigners, they tells me; and if a man is not fed, sure you can’t expect him to fight.  I couldn’t do it myself.  And I hope the duke ain’t going to put us on short rations, because it would be murther entirely on the boys to make them fight with impty stomachs.”

“I fancy we shall be all right as to that, Denis.  I expect that we shall wait quiet till the French attack us, and waiting quiet means getting plenty of food.”

“And dacent food, I hope, your honor; not the sort of thing they say them foreigners lives on.  Denis Mulligan could live on frogs and snails as well as another, no doubt; but it would go sorely against me, your honor.”

“I don’t think there’s much chance of your having to live on that Denis.  You will get rations there just the same as you did in Spain.”

“What! beef and mutton, your honor?  I suppose they will bring them across from England?”

“They may bring some across, Denis; but I suppose they will be able to buy plenty for the supply of the army out there.”

“What! have they got cattle and sheep there, your honor?” Denis asked incredulously.

“Of course they have, Denis; just the same as we have.”

“The hathens!” Denis exclaimed.  “To think that men who can get beef and mutton should feed upon such craturs as snails and such like.  It’s downright flying in the face of Providence, your honor.”

“Nonsense, Denis; they eat beef and mutton just the same as we do.  As to the frogs and snails, these are expensive luxuries, just as game is with us.  There is nothing more nasty about snails after all than there is about oysters; and as to frogs they were regarded as great dainties by the Romans, who certainly knew what good eating was.”