“You’d do anything he wanted done, whether you were fit and ready or not,” said Marco.  “He knows that.”

“Does he?  Do you think he does?” cried The Rat.  “I wish he’d try me.  I wish he would.”

Marco turned over on his bed and rose up on his elbow so that he faced The Rat on his sofa.

“Let us wait,” he said in a whisper.  “Let us wait.”

There was a pause, and then The Rat whispered also.

“For what?”

“For him to find out that we’re fit to be tried.  Don’t you see what fools we should be if we spent our time in being jealous, either of us.  We’re only two boys.  Suppose he saw we were only two silly fools.  When you are jealous of me or of Lazarus, just go and sit down in a still place and think of him.  Don’t think about yourself or about us.  He’s so quiet that to think about him makes you quiet yourself.  When things go wrong or when I’m lonely, he’s taught me to sit down and make myself think of things I like—­pictures, books, monuments, splendid places.  It pushes the other things out and sets your mind going properly.  He doesn’t know I nearly always think of him.  He’s the best thought himself.  You try it.  You’re not really jealous.  You only think you are.  You’ll find that out if you always stop yourself in time.  Any one can be such a fool if he lets himself.  And he can always stop it if he makes up his mind.  I’m not jealous.  You must let that thought alone.  You’re not jealous yourself.  Kick that thought into the street.”

The Rat caught his breath and threw his arms up over his eyes.  “Oh, Lord!  Oh, Lord!” he said; “if I’d lived near him always as you have.  If I just had.”

“We’re both living near him now,” said Marco.  “And here’s something to think of,” leaning more forward on his elbow.  “The kings who were being made ready for Samavia have waited all these years; We can make ourselves ready and wait so that, if just two boys are wanted to do something—­just two boys—­we can step out of the ranks when the call comes and say ‘Here!’ Now let’s lie down and think of it until we go to sleep.”

XIII

LORISTAN ATTENDS A DRILL OF THE SQUAD, AND MARCO MEETS A SAMAVIAN

The Squad was not forgotten.  It found that Loristan himself would have regarded neglect as a breach of military duty.

“You must remember your men,” he said, two or three days after The Rat became a member of his household.  “You must keep up their drill.  Marco tells me it was very smart.  Don’t let them get slack.”

“His men!” The Rat felt what he could not have put into words.

He knew he had worked, and that the Squad had worked, in their hidden holes and corners.  Only hidden holes and corners had been possible for them because they had existed in spite of the protest of their world and the vigilance of its policemen.  They had tried many refuges before they found the Barracks.  No one but resented the existence of a troop of noisy vagabonds.  But somehow this man knew that there had evolved from it something more than mere noisy play, that he, The Rat, had meant order and discipline.