“That’s enough,” said Dam shortly.

“Yep.  Quit those low-browed sounds, guttermut, or I’ll get mad all over,” agreed Fish, whose marvellous vocabulary included no foul words.  There was no need for them.

“Hi halso was abaht ter request you not to talk beastial, Mr.  ’Erbert ’Awker,” chimed in Trooper “Henery” Bone, anxious to be on the side of the saints.  “Oo’d taike you to be the Missin’ Hair of a noble ’ouse when you do such—­’Missin’ Hair!’ Missin’ Link more like,” he added with spurious indignation.

The allusion was to the oft-expressed belief of Trooper Herbert Hawker, a belief that became a certainty and subject for bloodshed and battle after the third quart or so, that there was a mystery about his birth.

There was, according to his reputed papa....

The plotters plotted, and Dam completed the burnishing of his arms, spurs, buckles, and other glittering metal impedimenta (the quantity of which earned the Corps its barrack-room soubriquet of “the Polish Its"), finished the flicking of spots of pipe-clay from his uniform, and dressed for Guard.

Being ready some time before he had to parade, he sat musing on his truckle-bed.

What a life!  What associates (outside the tiny band of gentlemen-rankers).  What cruel awful publicity of existence—­that was the worst of all.  Oh, for a private room and a private coat, and a meal in solitude!  Some place of one’s own, where one could express one’s own individuality in the choice and arrangement of property, and impress it upon one’s environment.

One could not even think in private here.

And he was called a private soldier!  A grim joke indeed, when the crying need of one’s soul was a little privacy.

A private soldier!

Well—­and what of the theory of Compensations, that all men get the same sum-total of good and bad, that position is really immaterial to happiness?  What of the theory that more honour means also more responsibility and worry, that more pay also means more expenses and a more difficult position, that more seniority also means less youth and joy—­that Fate only robs Peter to pay Paul, and, when bestowing a blessing with one hand, invariably bestows a curse with the other?

Too thin.

Excellent philosophy for the butterfly upon the road, preaching contentment to the toad, who, beneath the harrow, knows exactly where each tooth-point goes.  Let the butterfly come and try it.

What a life!

Not so bad at first, perhaps, for a stout-hearted, hefty sportsman, during recruit days when everything is novel, there is something to learn, time is fully occupied, and one is too busy to think, too busy evading strange pit-falls, and the just or (more often) unjust wrath of the Room Corporal, the Squadron Orderly Sergeant, the Rough-Riding Corporal, the Squadron Sergeant-Major, the Rough-Riding Sergeant-Major, the Regimental Sergeant-Major, the Riding-Master.