"
Then nothing would serve the children but that Colonel Fitzdenys must
ride Billy again; so a snaffle was put into his mouth and the Colonel
mounted him bare-backed, and took him for a little turn in the park and
leaped him over the bar, to their great delight. Then all three went
back to the garden again, and the children began plying him with
questions. His own poor horse was dead, the Colonel told them; he had
carried him all through the Peninsular War but had been killed at
Waterloo. The Colonel himself had been in the wars in India since
then, and the name of the battle was Maheidpore, but the Duke of
Wellington was not there. He had seen the Duke, however, only a few
days before in London, but he wasn't dressed in his red coat and cocked
hat, and he believed that the Duke never slept in his red coat and
cocked hat now.
"Is the Corporal like the Duke?" asked Dick anxiously. No! the Colonel
could not truthfully say that he was, but the Corporal was the bigger
man of the two, which was a consolation to the children.
Then the children asked him about Boney, for Polly Short, who had been
their maid, had told them that he was a "riglar monster," and she had
heard it from her first cousin's wife's brother-law, who was a sergeant
of Marines. But the Colonel said that Polly was wrong, for he had seen
Boney himself at St. Helena, and he was not in the least like a
monster, but a little fat man with a pale face and auburn hair, not
nearly as big as the Corporal.
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