“It’s an awful shame we can’t all emerge from the depths and run up to Town to breathe the sweet original atmosphere for just one night before we leave old England,” put in Trooper Punch Peerson (son of a noble lord) who would at that moment have been in the Officers’ Mess but for a congenital weakness in spelling and a dislike of mathematics.  “Pity we can’t get ‘leaf,’ and do ourselves glorious at the Carlton, and ‘afterwards’.  We could change at my Governor’s place into borrowed, stolen, and hired evening-kit, paint the village as scarlet as Sin or a trooper’s jacket, and then come home, like the Blackbird, to tea.  I am going, and if I can’t get ‘leaf’ I shall return under the bread in the rations-cart.  Money’s the root of all (successful) evil.”

Trooper Punch Peerson was a born leader of men, a splendid horseman and soldier, and he had the Army in his ardent, gallant blood and bones; but how shall a man head a cavalry charge or win the love and enthusiastic obedience of men and horses when he is weak in spelling and has a dislike of mathematics?

However, he was determined to follow in the footsteps of his ancestors, to serve his country in spite of her, and his Commission was certain and near.  Meanwhile he endeavoured to be a first-class trooper, had his uniform made of officers’ materials in Bond Street by his father’s famous tailor, and “got the stick” with ease and frequency.

“We’re not all gilded popinjays (nor poppin’ bottles),” observed a young giant who called himself Adam Goate, and had certainly been one in the days when he was Eugene Featherstonthwaite.  “All very well for you to come to the surface and breathe, seeing that you’ll be out of it soon.  You’re having nothing but a valuable experience and a hardening.  You’re going through the mill.  We’ve got to live in it.  What’s the good of our stirring everything up again?  Dam-silly of a skinned eel to grow another skin, to be skinned again....  No, ’my co-mates and brothers in exile,’ what I say is—­you can get just as drunk on ‘four-’arf’ as on champagne, and a lot cheaper.  Ask my honourable friend, Bear.”

(Trooper Bear gave a realistic, but musical hiccup.)

“Also, to the Philosopher, bread-and-dripping is as interesting and desirable prog as the voluble-varied heterogeny of the menu at the Carlton or the Ritz—­’specially when you’ve no choice.”

“Hear, hear,” put in Dam.

“Goatey ol’ Goate!” said Trooper Bear with impressive solemnity.  “Give me your hand, Philossiler.  I adore dripping.  I’ss a (hic) mystery.  (No, I don’ want both hands,” as Goate offered his right to Bear’s warm embrace.) I’m a colliseur of Dripping.  I understan’ it.  I write odes to it.  Yesh.  A basin of dripping is like a Woman.  ’Strornarillily.  You never know what’s beneath fair surface....  Below a placid, level, unrevealing surface there may be—­nothing ... and there may be a rich deposit of glorious, stimulating, piquant essence.”