In such fashion days and weeks rolled by; as time-wheels will, over the roughest ground, and through the most uninteresting country. For without doubt, drills can become monotonous; and if the body yielded itself more and more easily to regulations, as the time went on, so did not always the mind.
At first, in the strangeness of everything, details went for less, but now that he no longer wore the grey bag, to have his toes still kicked out set his blood tingling. He was so well made by nature, that "this extra regulation ramrod style," as he spitefully termed it, seemed like persecution. For some of the drill masters by no means slackened their demands as the need of them grew less.
"Get your shoulders back, Mr. Kindred!"
"Get them back, sir!"
"Get them back!"
"He had better take a sledge hammer and pound them in," Magnus declared one day.
"You'll be pounded for disrespect," Rig warned him.
"All right; it's a true bill. I don't respect that man, and I never shall."
"But officers, you know," suggested Rig.
"Oh, officers!" said Magnus loftily. "What business has he to be an officer, with the manners of a boot-black?"