THE DRAGON'S TEETH
sure that the dragon's teeth hadn't come up in the good old-fashioned way but that, on the other hand, it was barely possible that both the British and the enemy were only volunteers having a field-day or sham fight, and he rather thought the Cocked-Hatted Man was not a general, but a doctor. And the man with a red pennon carried behind him might have been the umpire.
Oswald never told the others a word of this. Their young breasts were all panting with joy because they had saved their country; and it would have been but heartless unkindness to show them how silly they had been. Besides, Oswald felt he was much too old to have been so taken in—if he had been. Besides, Albert's uncle did say that no one could be sure about the dragon's teeth.
The thing that makes Oswald feel most that, perhaps, the whole thing was a beastly sell was that we didn't see any wounded. But he tries not to think of this. And if he goes into the army when he grows up, he will not go quite green. He has had experience of the arts of war and the tented field. And a real colonel has called him "Comrade-in-Arms," which is exactly what Lord Roberts called his own soldiers when he wrote home about them.
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