--"

"'Twould do. 'Twould pass," sighed Trooper Burke, and added, "I would
suggest a certain Moselle I used to get at the Byculla Club in Bombay,
and a wondrous fine claret that spread a ruby haze of charm o'er my
lunch at the Yacht Club of the same fair city. A '_Mouton Rothschild_
something,' which was cheap at nine rupees a small bottle on the
morrow of a good day on the Mahaluxmi Racecourse." (It was strongly
suspected that Trooper Burke had worn a star on his shoulder-strap in
those Indian days.)

"It's an awful shame we can't all emerge from the depths and run up to
Town to breathe the sweet original atmosphere for just one night
before we leave old England," put in Trooper Punch Peerson (son of a
noble lord) who would at that moment have been in the Officers' Mess
but for a congenital weakness in spelling and a dislike of
mathematics. "Pity we can't get 'leaf,' and do ourselves glorious at
the Carlton, and 'afterwards'. We could change at my Governor's place
into borrowed, stolen, and hired evening-kit, paint the village as
scarlet as Sin or a trooper's jacket, and then come home, like the
Blackbird, to tea. I am going, and if I can't get 'leaf' I shall
return under the bread in the rations-cart. Money's the root of all
(successful) evil."

Trooper Punch Peerson was a born leader of men, a splendid horseman
and soldier, and he had the Army in his ardent, gallant blood and
bones; but how shall a man head a cavalry charge or win the love and
enthusiastic obedience of men and horses when he is weak in spelling
and has a dislike of mathematics?

However, he was determined to follow in the footsteps of his
ancestors, to serve his country in spite of her, and his Commission
was certain and near. Meanwhile he endeavoured to be a first-class
trooper, had his uniform made of officers' materials in Bond Street by
his father's famous tailor, and "got the stick" with ease and
frequency.

"We're not all gilded popinjays (nor poppin' bottles)," observed a
young giant who called himself Adam Goate, and had certainly been one
in the days when he was Eugene Featherstonthwaite. "All very well for
you to come to the surface and breathe, seeing that you'll be out of
it soon. You're having nothing but a valuable experience and a
hardening. You're going through the mill. We've got to _live_ in it.
What's the good of our stirring everything up again? Dam-silly of a
skinned eel to grow another skin, to be skinned again.... No, 'm