But
look at me. I am always getting barked. Dogs of Prussians! they pick me
out among a thousand. I shall have a headache all the afternoon, you see
else."
Some of our heads would never have ached again: but Dard had a good
thick skull.
Dard pulled out his spilikin savagely.
"I'll wrap it up in paper for Jacintha," said he. "Then that will learn
her what a poor soldier has to go through."
Even this consolation was denied Private Dard.
Corporal Coriolanus Gand, a bit of an infidel from Lyons, who sometimes
amused himself with the Breton's superstition, told him with a grave
face, that the splinter belonged not to him, but to the sutler, and,
though so small, was doubtless a necessary part of his frame.
"If you keep that, it will be a bone of contention between you two,"
said he; "especially at midnight. HE WILL BE ALWAYS COMING BACK TO YOU
FOR IT."
"There, take it away!" said the Breton hastily, "and bury it with the
poor fellow."
Sergeant La Croix presented himself before the colonel with a rueful
face and saluted him and said, "Colonel, I beg a thousand pardons; your
dinner has been spilt--a shot from the bastion.
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