play billiards till the first bugle sounds in the morning, and have a
wash and turn out as fresh as paint, but it won't last, Doolan, not in
this climate; his cheeks will have fallen in and he will have crow's
feet at the corners of his eyes before another year has gone over. I
like that other boy, Wilson, better. Of course he is a cub as yet, but
I should say there is good in him. Just at present I can see he is
beginning to fancy himself in love with Miss Hannay. That will do him
good; it is always an advantage to a lad like that to have a good honest
liking for a nice girl. Of course it comes to nothing, and for a time he
imagines himself the most unhappy of mortals, but it does him good for
all that; fellows are far less likely to get into mischief and go to the
bad after an affair of that sort. It gives him a high ideal, and if he
is worth anything he will try to make himself worthy of her, and the
good it does him will continue even after the charm is broken."

"What a fellow you are, Doctor," Captain Doolan said, looking down upon
his companion, "talking away like that in the middle of this racket,
which would be enough to bother Saint Patrick himself!"

"Well, come along downstairs, Doolan; we will have a final peg and then
be off; I expect Bathurst is beginning to fidget before now."

"It will do him good," Captain Doolan said disdainfully. "I have no
patience with a man who is forever working himself to death, riding
about the country as if Old Nick were behind him, and never giving
himself a minute for diversion of any kind. Faith, I would rather throw
myself down a well and have done with it, than work ten times as hard as
a black nigger."

"Well, I don't think, Doolan," the Doctor said dryly, "you are ever
likely to be driven to suicide by any such cause."

"You are right there, Doctor," the other said contentedly. "No man can
throw it in my teeth that I ever worked when I had no occasion to work.
If there were a campaign, I expect I could do my share with the best of
them, but in quiet times I just do what I have to do, and if anyone has
an anxiety to take my place in the rota for duty, he is as welcome to
it as the flowers of May. I had my share of it when I was a subaltern;
there is no better fellow living than the Major, but when he was Captain
of my company he used to keep me on the run by the hour together, till I
wished myself back in Connaught, and anyone who liked it might have had
the whole o