The visitors helped themselves to cigarettes. "We don't want to scrap: we want to see you shave, Guns. Watch him lathering himself with aspen hand!" They explored the cardboard-boxes and parcels that littered all available space. "Did you ever see such prodigal generosity as the man's friends display! Toast-rack—no home complete without one—Card-case!"—they probed among the tissue wrappings. "Case of pipes.... Handsome ormulu timepiece, suitably inscribed. My Ghost! Guns—almost thou persuadest me ..."
"Yes, those things came last night: people are awfully kind——"
The Torpedo Lieutenant intervened. "Come on, give him a chance—I'll never get him dressed with you two messing about."
The Gunnery Lieutenant grinned above the lather at his reflection in the mirror. "D'you hear that! That's the way he's been going on ever since I woke up. One would think I had G.P.I.!" The visitors prepared to depart. "You have my profound sympathy, Torps," said the Surgeon. "I was Best Man to a fellow once—faith, I kept him under morphia till it was all over. He was practically no trouble."
"Now I'm going to get my bath," said the Torpedo Lieutenant when the well-wishers had taken their departure. "Shove on any old clothes: we'll send your full-dress up to the hotel, and your boxes to the house; and you needn't worry your old head about anything."
Torps left the cabin; there was a tap at the door and a private of Marines entered, surveying the Gunnery Lieutenant with affectionate regard. "I just come in to see if we was turnin' out, sir. Razor all right? Better 'ave a 'ot bath this mornin', sir!" His master's unaccountable predilection for immersing his body in cold water every morning was a custom that not even twelve years of familiarity had robbed of its awfulness. "I strip right down an' 'ad a bath meself, sir, mornin' I was spliced," he admitted, as one who condones generously an inexplicable weakness, "but it were a 'ot one. You'd best 'ave it 'ot, sir!"
His master laughed. "No, thanks, Phillips; it's all right as it is. Will you be up at the house this afternoon and lend a hand, after the ceremony?"
The Private of Marines nodded sorrowfully. "I understands, sir. I bin married meself—I knows all the routine, as you might say." He departed with a sigh that left a faint reminiscence of rum in the morning air, and the Gunnery Lieutenant proceeded with his toilet, humming a little tune under his breath. Half an hour later he entered the Wardroom clad in comfortable grey flannels and an old shooting-coat. The Mess, breakfasting, received him with a queer mixture of chaff and solicitude. The First Lieutenant grinned over a boiled egg: "Guns, sorry I couldn't get back earlier to relieve you, but 'urgent private affairs,' you know."
"All right, Number One! As long as you got back before two o'clock this afternoon, that's all I cared about." He helped himself to bacon and poured out a cup of coffee.
"Marvellous!" The Indiarubber Man opposite feigned breathless interest in his actions, and murmured something into his cup about condemned men partaking of hearty breakfasts.