Especially when they ought to be orficers.
Go to 'ell!"

Doggie, who had suffered much in the army, but had never before been
taunted with being a dilettante gentleman private, still less been
consigned to hell on that account, leapt to his feet shaken by one of
his rare sudden gusts of anger.

"If you don't say I'm as good a private soldier as any in your rotten,
mangy regiment, I'll knock your blinking head off!"

An insult to a soldier's regiment can only be wiped out in blood.
Chipmunk threw cloth and legging to the winds and, springing from his
seat like a monkey, went for Doggie.

"You just try."

Doggie tried, and had not Chipmunk's head been very firmly secured to
his shoulders, he would have succeeded. Chipmunk went down as if he
had been bombed. It was his unguarded and unscientific rush that did
it. Doggie regarded his prostrate figure in gratified surprise.

"What's all this about?" cried a sharp, imperious voice.

Doggie instinctively stood at attention and saluted, and Chipmunk,
picking himself up in a dazed sort of way, did likewise.

"You two men shake hands and make friends at once," Oliver commanded.

"Yes, sir," said Doggie. He extended his hand, and Chipmunk, with the
nautical shamble, which in moments of stress defied a couple of years'
military discipline, advanced and shook it. Oliver strode hurriedly
away.

"I'm sorry I said that about the regiment, mate. I didn't mean it,"
said Doggie.

Chipmunk looked uncertainly into Doggie's eyes for what Doggie felt to
be a very long time. Chipmunk's dull brain was slowly realizing the
situation. The man opposite to him was his master's cousin. When he
had last seen him, he had no title to be called a man at all. His
vocabulary volcanically rich, but otherwise limited, had not been able
to express him in adequate terms of contempt and derision. Now behold
him masquerading as a private. Wounded. But any fool could get
wounded. Behold him further coming down from the social heights
whereon his master dwelt, to take a rise out of him, Chipmunk. In
self-defence he had taken the obvious course. He had told him to go to
hell. Then the important things had happened. Not the effeminate
gentleman but some one very much like the common Tommy of his
acquaintance had responded. And he had further responded with the
familiar vigour but unwonted science of the rank and file. He had also
stood at attention and saluted and obeyed like any common Tommy, when
t