Our Soldier Boy | Page 5

tails."
"And enough to make me," said Mrs Corporal tartly. "There never was such a boy before. Look at him!" and she pointed to where the little fellow, in full uniform, was perched on a mule-pack, and the baggage guard with fixed bayonets marched close beside.
"Yes," said Joe drily, as he screwed up his face; "I've been a-looking at him a deal. His coatee fits horrid."
"That it don't," said Mrs Corporal; "and it was the best I could do out of such old stuff."
"Well, it weer old," said her husband; "but it's all crinkles and creases, and that boy puzzles me."
"Why? How?"
"'Cause you'd think after he'd seen his people killed and the house burnt about his ears he'd ha' been frightened like; but he don't seem to mind nothing about it, not a bit."
"Ah, it is strange," said Mrs Corporal; "but there couldn't be a braver nor a better little chap."
"That there couldn't," said the Corporal proudly; "but I think I've found out what's the matter with him. That crack on the head made him an idjit."
"For shame, Joe!" cried his wife. "He's as clever and bright a little fellow as ever stepped."
"So he is, missus; but he puzzles me. It's ama-a-azin'."
The boy puzzled Tom Jones the bugler boy too, who whenever he got a chance came alongside of the mule or baggage wagon in the rear, and let the little invalid earn his bugle on condition that he did not try to blow it, and Tom made this an excuse for solemnly asking the same questions over and over again.
"I say, who's your father?"
"Corporal Joe Beane," said the boy promptly; "I say, Tom, mayn't I have a blow now?"
"What? No, of course not. You don't want to send the men at the double up a hill like this."
"Why not? I should like to run too, only I so soon get tired."
"You shall have a blow some day. But I say, who's your mother?"
"Mrs Corporal Joe Beane," was the prompt reply, and the boy drummed the mule's sides to make it go faster, but without effect.
"Well, where did you live before Joe Beane found you?"
"I don't know," said the boy, shaking his head, and Tom Jones stared hard with his mouth open before asking his next question.
"I say, how's your head?"
"Quite well, thank you," said the boy; "how's yours?"
Tom scratched his as if he did not know.
"Look here," he cried, after a pause, as a happy thought crossed his mind, and without pausing to state how his own head was, he fired off another question:--"I say, who did you live with before we found you?"
"I don't know," said the boy, looking at him wonderingly, and as if he felt amused by his companion's questions. "You ask mother."
"Here! Quick," whispered Tom. "Give me my bugle."
"Shan't. I want it," replied the boy coolly.
"But you must. Here's the Colonel and half the officers reined up at the side to see us go by."
He snatched the bugle away as he spoke and threw the cord over his shoulder, drawing himself up smartly, and keeping step with the guard.
Mrs Corporal Beane had caught sight of the group of officers they were approaching, and with her heart in her mouth as she called it, she hurried up to the side of the mule, catching up to it just as they came abreast of the Colonel, a quiet stern-looking officer whose hair was sprinkled with grey.
Nothing escaped his sharp eyes, and he pressed his horse's side and rode close to the baggage mule.
"What boy's that, my good woman?"
"Mine, sir," said Mrs Beane huskily.
"Indeed? Is that the little fellow who was found in the burned village?"
"Yes, sir," faltered the woman, as she gazed in the Colonel's stern frowning countenance.
"Humph!" he ejaculated, and drew rein for the rear of the regiment to file past.
"And now my poor boy will be sent away, Joe," said the agitated woman that night; but Joe said nothing, not even when he felt his wife get up and go to where the little fellow was sleeping soundly, and he heard her utter a curious sobbing sound before she came to lie down again.
But no orders were given next day for the boy to be sent to the rear, nor yet during the next week, during which the men were still hunting frogs, as they called it--frogs which took such big leaps that the toiling British soldiers could not come up to them.
"Oh, if they only would let us," Joe used to say every night when he pulled off his boots to rest his feet. "It's my one wish, for we must give 'em a drubbing, or we shall never have the face to go back to old England again."
Joe had his wish sooner than he expected.
It was in a wild mountainous part of the beautiful