A Letter
(From Captain Claude Seaforth to a novelist friend)
My dear Man,—You asked me to tell you if anything very remarkable came my way. I think I have a story for you at last. If I could only write I would make something of it myself, but not being of Kitchener's Army I can't.
The other day, while I was clearing up papers and accounts, and all over ink, as I always get, the Sergeant came to me, looking very rum. "Two young fellows want to see you," he said.
Of course I said I was too busy and that he must deal with them.
"I think you'd rather see them yourself," he said, with another odd look.
"What do they want?" I asked.
"They want to enlist," he said; "but they don't want to see the doctor."
We've had some of these before—consumptives of the bull-dog breed, you know. Full of pluck but no mortal use; knocked out by the first route march.
"Why don't you tell them that they must see the doctor and have done with it?" I asked the Sergeant.