ething
severe at this point and check matters. If she be tender-hearted, and send
for a drink of water, the chances are largely in favor of another girl
laughing at the afflicted one and herself collapsing. Thus the trouble
spreads, and may end in half of what answers to the Lower Sixth of
a boys' school rocking and whooping together. Given a week of warm
weather, two stately promenades per diem, a heavy mutton and rice meal
in the middle of the day, a certain amount of nagging from the teachers,
and a few other things, some amazing effects develop. At least this is
what folk say who have had experience.

Now, the Mother Superior of a Convent and the Colonel of a British
Infantry Regiment would be justly shocked at any comparison being made
between their respective charges. But it is a fact that, under certain
circumstances, Thomas in bulk can be worked up into ditthering, rippling
hysteria. He does not weep, but he shows his trouble unmistakably, and
the consequences get into the newspapers, and all the good people
who hardly know a Martini from a Snider say: "Take away the brute's
ammunition!"

Thomas isn't a brute, and his business, which is to look after the
virtuous people, demands that he shall have his ammunition to his hand.
He doesn't wear silk stockings, and he really ought to be supplied with
a new Adjective to help him to express his opinions; but, for all that,
he is a great man. If you call him "the heroic defender of the national
honor" one day, and "a brutal and licentious soldiery" the next, you
naturally bewilder him, and he looks upon you with suspicion. There is
nobody to speak for Thomas except people who have theories to work off
on him; and nobody understands Thomas except Thomas, and he does not
always know what is the matter with himself.

That is the prologue. This is the story:

Corporal Slane was engaged to be married to Miss Jhansi M'Kenna,
whose history is well known in the regiment and elsewhere. He had his
Colonel's permission, and, being popular with the men, every arrangement
had been made to give the wedding what Private Ortheris called "eeklar."
It fell in the heart of the hot weather, and, after the wedding,
Slane was going up to the Hills with the Bride. None the less, Slane's
grievance was that the affair would be only a hired-carriage wedding,
and he felt that the "eeklar" of that was meagre. Miss M'Kenna did
not care so much. The Sergeant's wife was helping her to make her
w