Private Dormer popped his head out of his blanket and gazed at the glory below and around.
‘Well damn my eyes!’ said Private Dormer in an awed whisper. ‘This ‘ere is like a bloomin’ gallantry-show!’ For the rest of the day he was dumb, but achieved an ensanguined filthiness through the cleaning of big fish.
The boat returned on Saturday evening. Dormer had been struggling with speech since noon. As the lines and luggage were being disembarked, he found tongue.
‘Beg y’ pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘but would you would you min’ shakin’ ‘ands with me, sir?’
‘Of course not,’ said Bobby, and he shook accordingly. Dormer returned to barracks and Bobby to mess.
‘He wanted a little quiet and some fishing, I think,’ said Bobby. ‘My aunt, but he’s a filthy sort of animal! Have you ever seen him clean them muchly-fish with ‘is thumbs”?’
‘Anyhow,’ said Revere three weeks later, ‘he’s doing his best to keep his things clean.’
When the spring died, Bobby joined in the general scramble for Hill leave, and to his surprise and delight secured three months.
‘As good a boy as I want,’ said Revere the admiring skipper.
‘The best of the batch,’ said the Adjutant to the Colonel. ‘Keep back that young skrim-shanker Porkiss, sir, and let Revere make him sit up.’
So Bobby departed joyously to Simla Pahar with a tin box of gorgeous raiment.
‘Son of Wick old Wick of Chota-Buldana? Ask him to dinner, dear,’ said the aged men.
‘What a nice boy!’ said the matrons and the maids.
‘First-class place, Simla. Oh, ripping!’ said Bobby Wick, and ordered new white cord breeches on the strength of it.
‘We’re in a bad way,’ wrote Revere to Bobby at the end of two months. ‘Since you left, the Regiment has taken to fever and is fairly rotten with it two hundred in hospital, about a hundred in cells drinking to keep off fever and the Companies on parade fifteen file strong at the outside. There’s rather more sickness in the out-villages than I care for, but then I’m so blistered with prickly-heat that I’m ready to hang myself. What’s the yarn about your mashing a Miss Haverley up there? Not serious, I hope? You’re over-young to hang millstones round your neck, and the Colonel will turf you out of that in double-quick time if you attempt it.’