“He’s a Scotchman and was middle-weight champion of India last year,” rejoined Dam, and moistened his block of pipe-clay again in the most obvious, if least genteel, way.

“Annyhow he’s a mere Hussar and must be rimonsthrated wid for darin’ to assault and batther a Dhraghoon—­an’ him dhrunk, poor bhoy.  Say the wurrud, Matty.  We’ll lay for the spalpeen, the whole of E Troop, at the Ring o’ Bells, an’ whin he shwaggers in like he was a Dhraghoon an’ a sodger, ye’ll up an’ say ’Threes about’ an’ act accordin’ subsequint, an’ learn the baste not to desthroy an’ insult his betthers of the Ould Second.  Thread on the tail of his coat, Matty....”

“If I had anything to do with it at all I’d tread on Flannigan’s coat, and you can tell him so, for disgracing the Corps....  Take off your jacket and help with my boots, Shocky.  I’m for Guard.”

“Oi’d clane the boots of no man that ud demane himself to ax it,” was the haughty reply of the disappointed warrior.  “Not for less than a quart at laste,” he amended.

“A quart it is,” answered Dam, and O’Shaughnessy speedily divested himself of his stable-jacket, incidentally revealing the fact that he had pawned his shirt.

“You have got your teeth ready, then?” observed Dam, noting the underlying bareness—­and thereby alluded to O’Shaughnessy’s habit of pawning his false teeth after medical inspection and redeeming them in time for the next, at the cost of his underclothing—­itself redeemed in turn by means of the teeth.  Having been compelled to provide himself with a “plate” he invariably removed the detested contrivance and placed it beside him when sitting down to meals (on those rare occasions when he and not his “uncle” was the arbiter of its destinies)....

A young and important Lance-Corporal, a shocking tyrant and bully, strode into the room, his sword clanking.  O’Shaughnessy arose and respectfully drew him aside, offering him a “gasper”.  They were joined by a lean hawk-faced individual answering to the name of Fish, who said he had been in the American navy until buried alive at sea for smiling within sight of the quarter-deck.

“Yep,” he was heard to say to some statement of O’Shaughnessy’s.  “We’ll hatch a five-bunch frame-up to put the eternal kibosh on the tuberous spotty—­souled skunklet.  Some.  We’ll make him wise to whether a tippy, chew-the-mop, bandy-legged, moke-monkey can come square-pushing, and with his legs out, down this side-walk, before we ante out.  Some.”

“Ah, Yus,” agreed the Lance-Corporal.  “Damned if I wouldn’t chawnce me arm[19] and go fer ‘im meself before we leave—­on’y I’m expectin’ furver permotion afore long.  But fer that I’d take it up meself”—­and he glanced at Dam.

“Ketch the little swine at it,” remarked Trooper Herbert Hawker, as loudly as he dared, to his “towny,” Trooper Henry Bone. “’Chawnst ’is arm!’ It’s ‘is bloomin’ life ’e’d chawnce if that Young Jock got settin’ abaht ’im.  Not ’arf!” and the exotic of the Ratcliffe Highway added most luridly expressed improprieties anent the origins of the Lance-Corporal, his erstwhile enemy and, now, superior officer, in addition.