'And--a--I say, Puddock--Lieutenant O'Flaherty, I thought--I--I thought, d'ye see, just now, eh? (he looked inquisitively, but there was no answer); I thought, I say, he looked devilish out of sorts, is he--a--_ill_?'
'He _was very_ ill, indeed, this afternoon, general; a sudden attack----'
The general looked quickly at Puddock's plump, consequential face; but there was no further light in it. 'He _was_ hurt then, I knew it'--he thought--'who's attending him--and why is he out--and was it a flesh-wound--or where was it?' all these questions silently, but vehemently, solicited an answer--and he repeated the last aloud, in a careless sort of way.
'And--a--Lieutenant Puddock, you were saying--a--tell me--now--_where_ was it?'
'In the park, general,' said Puddock, in perfect good faith.
'Eh? ah! in the park, was it? but I want to know, you know, what part of the body--d'ye see--the shoulder--or?----'
'The duodenum, Dr. Toole called it--just here, general,' and he pressed his fingers to what is vulgarly known as the 'pit' of his stomach.
'What, Sir, do you mean to say the pit of his stomach?' said the general, with more horror and indignation than he often showed.
'Yes, just about that point, general, and the pain was very violent indeed,' answered Puddock, looking with a puzzled stare at the general's stern and horrified countenance--an officer might have a pain in his stomach, he thought, without exciting all that emotion. Had he heard of the poison, and did he know more of the working of such things than, perhaps, the doctors did?
'And what in the name of Bedlam, Sir, does he mean by walking about the town with a hole through his--his what's his name? I'm hanged but I'll place him under arrest this moment,' the general thundered, and his little eyes swept the perspective this way and that, as if they would leap from their sockets, in search of the reckless O'Flaherty. 'Where's the adjutant, Sir?' he bellowed with a crimson scowl and a stamp, to the unoffending sentry.
'That's the way to make him lie quiet, and keep his bed till he heals, Sir.'
Puddock explained, and the storm subsided, rumbling off in half a dozen testy assertions on the general's part that he, Puddock, had distinctly used the word '_wounded_,' and now and then renewing faintly, in a muttered explosion, on the troubles and worries of his command, and a great many 'pshaws!' and several fits of coughing, for the general continued out of breath for some time. He had showed his cards, however, and so, in a dignified disconcerted sort of way, he told Puddock that he had heard something about O'Flaherty's having got most improperly into a foolish quarrel, and having met Nutter that afternoon, and for a moment feared he might have been hurt; and then came enquiries about Nutter, and there appeared to have been no one hurt, and yet the parties on the ground--and no fighting--and yet no reconciliation--and, in fact, the general was so puzzled with this conundrum, and so curious, that he was very near calling after Puddock, when they parted at the bridge, and making him entertain him, at some cost of consistency, with the whole story.