The Skipper despatched his pen-picture to H.Q. and forgot all about it, and so did H.Q. apparently, for we heard nothing further, and in due course forgot all about it ourselves, and in the meanwhile MacTavish got back into form, and MacTavish in form is no shrinking lily be it said.
He has a figure which tests every stitch in his Sam Browne, a bright blue eye and a complexion which an external application of mixed weather and an internal application of tawny port has painted the hue of the beetroot.
Then suddenly, like a bomb from the blue, an ambulance panted up to the door and presented a H.Q. chit to the effect that the body of MacTavish be delivered to it at once to bear off to X.
The Skipper at the time was out hacking and Albert Edward was in charge; he sent an orderly flying to MacTavish, who rolled in from his tent singing "My Friend John" at the top of his voice and looking more like an over-fed beetroot than ever.
"Dash it all, I don't want to go to their confounded mortuary," he shouted; "never felt fitter in my life. I can't go; I won't go!"
"You'll have to," said Albert Edward; "can't let the Skipper down after that pen-picture he wrote; the Staff would never believe another word he said. No, MacTavish, my son, you'll have to play the game and go."
"But, you ass, look at him," wailed the Babe; "look at his ruddy, ruby, tomato-ketchup, plum-and-apple complexion. What are you going to do about that?"
"I'll settle his complexion," replied Albert Edward grimly; "tell his man to toss his tooth-brush into the meat-waggon; and you, Mac, come with me."
He led the violently protesting MacTavish into the kitchen. The cook tells me Albert Edward pounded two handfuls of flour into MacTavish's complexion and filled his eye-sockets up with coal-dust, and I quite believe the cook, for in five minutes' time I came on Albert Edward dragging what I at first took to be the body of a dead Pierrot down the passage towards the waiting ambulance, at the same time exhorting it to play the game and wobble for the Skipper's sake.
The wretched MacTavish, choking with flour and blinded with coal-dust, wobbled like a Clydesdale with the staggers.