oh, my dear Tony!...

the smell...." He laughed like a schoolboy in anticipation of a prank, and held his scented handkerchief to his nose.

My Lord Hastings chuckled audibly, and Tony punched him for this unseemly display of mirth.
Armand watched the little scene in utter amazement.

He had been in England over a year, and yet he could not understand these Englishmen.
Surely they were the queerest, most inconsequent people in the world.
Here were these men, who were engaged at this very moment in an enterprise which for cool-headed courage and foolhardy daring had probably no parallel in history.

They were literally taking their lives in their hands, in all probability facing certain death; and yet they now sat chaffing and fighting like a crowd of third-form schoolboys, talking utter, silly nonsense, and making foolish jokes that would have shamed a Frenchman in his teens.