u're a new recruit.
You and Marco are both under a commanding officer." He said the words
because he knew they would elate him and stir his blood.

XII

"ONLY TWO BOYS"

The words did elate him, and his blood was stirred by them every time
they returned to his mind. He remembered them through the days and
nights that followed. He sometimes, indeed, awakened from his deep
sleep on the hard and narrow sofa in Marco's room, and found that he
was saying them half aloud to himself. The hardness of the sofa did
not prevent his resting as he had never rested before in his life. By
contrast with the past he had known, this poor existence was comfort
which verged on luxury. He got into the battered tin bath every
morning, he sat at the clean table, and could look at Loristan and
speak to him and hear his voice. His chief trouble was that he could
hardly keep his eyes off him, and he was a little afraid he might be
annoyed. But he could not bear to lose a look or a movement.

At the end of the second day, he found his way, at some trouble, to
Lazarus's small back room at the top of the house.

"Will you let me come in and talk a bit?" he said.

When he went in, he was obliged to sit on the top of Lazarus's wooden
box because there was nothing else for him.

"I want to ask you," he plunged into his talk at once, "do you think he
minds me looking at him so much? I can't help it--but if he hates
it--well--I'll try and keep my eyes on the table."

"The Master is used to being looked at," Lazarus made answer. "But it
would be well to ask himself. He likes open speech."

"I want to find out everything he likes and everything he doesn't
like," The Rat said. "I want--isn't there anything--anything you'd let
me do for him? It wouldn't matter what it was. And he needn't know
you are not doing it. I know you wouldn't be willing to give up
anything particular. But you wait on him night and day. Couldn't you
give up something to me?"

Lazarus pierced him with keen eyes. He did not answer for several
seconds.

"Now and then," he said gruffly at last, "I'll let you brush his boots.
But not every day--perhaps once a week."

"When will you let me have my first turn?" The Rat asked.

Lazarus reflected. His shaggy eyebrows drew themselves down over his
eyes as if this were a question of state.

"Next Saturday," he conceded. "Not before. I'll tell him when you
brush them."

"You needn't," said The Rat. "It