‘What’s the good of serving on in the old corps now?’ said Hanlon, very wroth, after he had done his defaulter’s drill. ‘It’s not what it used to be. I’ll put in for my discharge.’
He was fully entitled to it. Twenty-one years’ service, all told. Five good-conduct badges, less one, which his recent misconduct had robbed him of; for with old soldiers it is strength of head, or immunity from punishment that brings reputation; and Hanlon, thanks to Colonel Prioleau’s good nature, had the credit of being one of the best behaved men in the regiment.
‘I won’t stay to be humbugged about,’ he said, indignantly, to his comrade Herbert. ‘I’ll take my pension and look out for a billet in civil life.’
‘What can you get to do?’
‘Lots of things. Commissionaire, prison warder, attendant in a lunatic ’sylum.’
Herbert pricked up his ears.
‘Do you think you could get the last? I wish you would, and I’ll tell you why. You’ve never heard my story?’
Whereupon Herbert told it all.
‘I knew you was a nob from the first. I saw it in your talk and in the cut of your jib. Dr. Plum’s of Greystone, you say. Right you are. That’s where I’ll go. To-morrow, if not sooner, and I’ll give you the office—double quick. Hold on a bit, that’s all you’ve got to do; hold on, and do your duty, and it’ll all come right in the end. And see here—’
Hanlon looked about him, as if afraid of listeners.