Hussars.

CAPT. G. (Uneasily.) We were little more than boys then. Can't you see,
Jack, how things stand? 'Tisn't as if we were serving for our bread.
We've all of us, more or less, got the filthy lucre. I'm luckier than
some, perhaps. There's no call for me to serve on.

CAPT. M. None in the world for you or for us, except the Regimental. If
you don't choose to answer to that, of course--

CAPT. G. Don't be too hard on a man. You know that a lot of us only take
up the thing for a few years and then go back to Town and catch on with
the rest.

CAPT. M. Not lots, and they aren't some of Us.

CAPT. G. And then there are one's affairs at Home to be considered--my
place and the rents, and all that. I don't suppose my father can last
much longer, and that means the title, and so on.

CAPT. M. 'Fraid you won't be entered in the Stud Book correctly unless
you go Home? Take six months, then, and come out in October. If I could
slay off a brother or two, I s'pose I should be a Marquis of sorts.
Any fool can be that; but it needs men, Gaddy--men like you--to lead
flanking squadrons properly. Don't you delude yourself into the belief
that you're going Home to take your place and prance about among
pink-nosed Kabuli dowagers. You aren't built that way. I know better.

CAPT. G. A man has a right to live his life as happily as he can. You
aren't married.

CAPT. M. No--praise be to Providence and the one or two women who have
had the good sense to jawab me.

CAPT. G. Then you don't know what it is to go into your own room and see
your wife's head on the pillow, and when everything else is safe and the
house shut up for the night, to wonder whether the roof-beams won't give
and kill her.

CAPT. M. (Aside.) Revelations first and second! (Aloud.) So-o! I knew
a man who got squiffy at our Mess once and confided to me that he never
helped his wife on to her horse without praying that she'd break her neck
before she came back. All husbands aren't alike, you see.

CAPT. G. What on earth has that to do with my case? The man must ha'
been mad, or his wife as bad as they make 'em.

CAPT. M. (Aside.) 'No fault of yours if either weren't all you say.
You've forgotten the time when you were insane about the Herriott woman.
You always were a good hand at forgetting. (Aloud.) Not more mad than
men who go to the other extreme. Be reasonable, Gaddy. Your roof-beams
are sound enough.

CAPT. G. That was only a way of speaking. I've been