The Senior Subaltern was so pleased with getting his Company and his acceptance at the same time that he forgot to bother The Worm.  The girl was a pretty girl, and had money of her own.  She does not come into this story at all.

One night, at beginning of the hot weather, all the Mess, except The Worm who had gone to his own room to write Home letters, were sitting on the platform outside the Mess House.  The Band had finished playing, but no one wanted to go in.  And the Captains’ wives were there also.  The folly of a man in love is unlimited.  The Senior Subaltern had been holding forth on the merits of the girl he was engaged to, and the ladies were purring approval, while the men yawned, when there was a rustle of skirts in the dark, and a tired, faint voice lifted itself.

“Where’s my husband?”

I do not wish in the least to reflect on the morality of the “Shikarris”; but it is on record that four men jumped up as if they had been shot.  Three of them were married men.  Perhaps they were afraid that their wives had come from Home unbeknownst.  The fourth said that he had acted on the impulse of the moment.  He explained this afterwards.

Then the voice cried:  “Oh Lionel!” Lionel was the Senior Subaltern’s name.  A woman came into the little circle of light by the candles on the peg tables, stretching out her hands to the dark where the Senior Subaltern was, and sobbing.  We rose to our feet, feeling that things were going to happen and ready to believe the worst.  In this bad, small world of ours, one knows so little of the life of the next man—­which, after all, is entirely his own concern—­that one is not surprised when a crash comes.  Anything might turn up any day for anyone.  Perhaps the Senior Subaltern had been trapped in his youth.  Men are crippled that way occasionally.  We didn’t know; we wanted to hear; and the Captains’ wives were as anxious as we.  If he had been trapped, he was to be excused; for the woman from nowhere, in the dusty shoes and gray traveling dress, was very lovely, with black hair and great eyes full of tears.  She was tall, with a fine figure, and her voice had a running sob in it pitiful to hear.  As soon as the Senior Subaltern stood up, she threw her arms round his neck, and called him “my darling” and said she could not bear waiting alone in England, and his letters were so short and cold, and she was his to the end of the world, and would he forgive her?  This did not sound quite like a lady’s way of speaking.  It was too demonstrative.

Things seemed black indeed, and the Captains’ wives peered under their eyebrows at the Senior Subaltern, and the Colonel’s face set like the Day of Judgment framed in gray bristles, and no one spoke for a while.

Next the Colonel said, very shortly:  “Well, sir?” and the woman sobbed afresh.  The Senior Subaltern was half choked with the arms round his neck, but he gasped out:  “It’s a d——­d lie!  I never had a wife in my life!” “Don’t swear,” said the Colonel.  “Come into the Mess.  We must sift this clear somehow,” and he sighed to himself, for he believed in his “Shikarris,” did the Colonel.