At this instant the officer on duty, having from his quarters heard the shouting, came through the division, and, seeing Marsden with his hair and clothes all wet, and hearing his shouts of “I’m not drunk?” at once said,—
“Mr Marsden, you’re tipsy! You’ll be in arrest, sir, till further orders?”
“I’m not drunk, sir?” said Marsden. “Go to your room, sir, in arrest!” said the officer, as he walked off from the division.
When Forester came into his room he was in fits of laughter. “If that won’t cure Marsden of shamming I don’t know what will!” he said. “It serves him quite right for humbugging as he does?”
On the following morning Marsden asked Forester to give evidence as to his not being drank the night before, “for,” said Marsden, “you know I wasn’t.”
“What?” said Forester; “when you told me you were beastly screwed on guv’nor’s gooseberry—champagne, I mean? You don’t mean to say you told a lie? I was bound to believe you, and did what I thought was best for you to save you from being seen in the state you were by the officer?”
“But I wasn’t screwed!” said Marsden.
“Not when the officer came,” replied Forester; “that’s very likely. A powerful shower-bath is a wonderful soberer; and next time you come in screwed and shouting from the effects of champagne, you’ll find it just as good a cure! No, I can’t say you were not screwed; you looked like being so, and you said you were?”
There was an audible titter on parade that day when the officer on duty read out, among other orders by the Captain of the Cadet Company, that Mr Marsden, having been under the influence of drink when returning from leave on Sunday evening, was to be in arrest for seven days!
Forester’s cure was effective. Marsden was never the worse for his governor’s wine after that evening.