'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.
So Puddock--his head full of delicious visions--marched homeward--to powder and perfume, and otherwise equip for that banquet of the gods, of which he was to partake at five o'clock, and just as he turned the corner at 'The Phoenix,' who should he behold, sailing down the Dublin road from the King's House, with a grand powdered footman, bearing his cane of office, and a great bouquet behind her, and Gertrude Chattesworth by her side, but the splendid and formidable Aunt Becky, who had just been paying her compliments to old Mrs.Colonel Stafford, from whom she had heard all about the duel.

So as Puddock's fat cheeks grew pink at sight of Miss Gertrude, all Aunt Becky's colour flushed into her face, as her keen eye pierced the unconscious lieutenant from afar off, and chin and nose high in air, her mouth just a little tucked in, as it were, at one corner--a certain sign of coming storm--an angry hectic in each cheek, a fierce flirt of her fan, and two or three short sniffs that betokened mischief--she quickened her pace, leaving her niece a good way in the rear, in her haste to engage the enemy.

Before she came up she commenced the action at a long range, and very abruptly--for an effective rhetorician of Aunt Becky's sort, jumps at once, like a good epic poet, _in medias res_; and as Nutter, who, like all her friends in turn, experienced once or twice 'a taste of her quality,' observed to his wife, 'by Jove, that woman says things for which she ought to be put in the watch-house.' So now and here she maintained her reputation-- 'You ought to be flogged, Sir; yes,' she insisted, answering Puddock's bewildered stare, 'tied up to the halberts and flogged.' Aunt Rebecca was accompanied by at least half a dozen lap-dogs, and those intelligent brutes, aware of his disgrace, beset poor Puddock's legs with a furious vociferation.
'Madam,' said he, his ears tingling, and making a prodigious low bow; 'commissioned officers are never flogged.' 'So much the worse for the service, Sir; and the sooner they abolish that anomalous distinction the better.

I'd have them begin, Sir, with you, and your accomplice in murder, Lieutenant O'Flaherty.' 'Madam! your most obedient humble servant,' said Puddock, with another bow, still more ceremonious, flushing up intensely to the very roots of his powdered hair, and feeling in his swelling heart that all the generals of all the armies of Europe dare not have held such language to him.
'Good-evening, Sir,' said Aunt Becky, with an energetic toss of her head, having discharged her shot; and with an averted countenance, and in high disdain, she swept grandly on, quite forgetting her niece, who said a pleasant word or two to Puddock as she passed, and smiled so kindly, and seemed so entirely unconscious of his mortification, that he was quite consoled, and on the whole was made happy and elated by the rencontre, and went home to his wash-balls and perfumes in a hopeful and radiant, though somewhat excited state.
Indeed, the little lieutenant knew that kind-hearted termagant, Aunt Becky, too well, to be long cast down or even flurried by her onset.
When the same little Puddock, about a year ago, had that ugly attack of pleurisy, and was so low and so long about recovering, and so puny and fastidious in appetite, she treated him as kindly as if he were her own son, in the matter of jellies, strong soups, and curious light wines, and had afterwards lent him some good books which the little lieutenant had read through, like a man of honour as he was.