ent on, "I could be wishing this varry
creeditable-appearing institution--judging from the ootside o't--were
twice as big as it is, wi' maybe an Annexe or so to the back of that."

"My dear Major, I never knew you really satisfied and happy but once, and
that was when we had fifty men down with dysentery and fever in a
tin-roofed Railway goods-shed, and a hundred and seventy more under leaky
canvas, and you were out of chlorodyne and quinine, and could get no
milk."

"That goes to prove the eleementary difference between the male an' the
female character. A man will no' keep on dithering for what he kens he
canna' get. A woman, especially a young an' pretty----" He broke off to
say: "Toch! will ye hark to Beauvayse! The very name of the sex sets that
lad rampaging."

"Beautiful! I tell you, sir," the handsome, fair-haired young aide-de-camp
was emphatically assuring that stout, rubicund personage, the Mayor, "the
loveliest girl I ever saw in my life, or ever shall see--bar none! I saw
her first on the Recreation Ground, the day a gang of Boer blackguards
insulted some nuns who were in charge of a ladies' school, and to-day she
passed with two other Sisters of Mercy, and I touched my hat to her as the
Staff dismounted at the gate."

"Another _rara avis_, Beau?" the Colonel called across the intervening
group of talkers. The group of khaki-clad figures separated, and turned
first to the Chief, then to the bright-eyed, bright-faced enthusiast.
White teeth flashed in tanned faces, chaff began:

"In love again, for the first and only time, Toby?"

"Since he lost his heart to Miss What's-her-name, that pretty 'Jollity'
girl, with the double-barrelled repeating wink, and the postcard grin."

"Don't forget the velvet-voiced beauty of the dark, moonless night on the
Cape Town Hotel verandah!"

"_She_ turned out to be a Hottentot lady, didn't she?"

"Cavalry Problem No. 1. Put yourself in Lieutenant the Right Hon. the Lord
Viscount Beauvayse's place, and give in detail the precautions you would
have taken to insure the transport of your heart uninjured from the Staff
Headquarters to the Hospital Gate. Show on the map the disposition of the
enemy, whether desirous to enslave, or likely to be mashed...."

"She was neither," the crimson boy declared. "She was simply a lady, quiet
and high-bred and simple enough to have been a Princess of the blood, or
to look a fellow in the face and pass him by without the slightest
idea