"What's the good of knowing you've got a silver ink-pot, or a tea-kettle, or a cellaret full of whisky at home, when you're perishing for a wholesome drink on the field?"
And Barrington said that was petty, and so did Thwaites. They seemed to think that the remembrance of our testimonial safe at home would carry Hutchings safely through all the horrors of the campaign.
It turned out that I had rather touched up Barrington, for he had actually been thinking about a silver ink-pot, and Thwaites had been thinking about a cellaret with three bottles of various spirits; but I told them flatly I didn't agree with them. Then they asked Sutherland his idea, and he said it wasn't so much what we should like as what Hutchings would.
He said:
"Perhaps a very fine meerschaum pipe, mounted in silver with an inscription, would do, because there you have a creature comfort of the first class and also a testimonial which would not wear out. And a pipe would be far more to Hutchings, either in war or peace, than an ink-pot, or, in fact, anything of that sort."
And Rice said:
"Why not get the man a sword? He could use it in the War, and, if all went well, he could hang it up in his home afterwards; and if there was blood on it, then he'd have great additional pleasure every time he looked at it. And so would his family."
Barrington rather liked the sword; but he said classy swords were frightfully expensive, and he doubted whether we should run to it. Then the committee broke up, to meet again when we found how the subscriptions came in.
Unfortunately, this department of the testimonial was very slow. Mitchell, with great trouble, wrote out a list of the whole school, and was allowed to put it on the notice-board. Class by class he wrote it--one hundred and thirty-two boys he wrote--with money columns and a line leading from each boy to the money column. On it, in large ornamental letters, Nicholson, who was a dab at printing, put the words--
TESTIMONIAL FUND TO LIEUTENANT
HUTCHINGS, FROM MERIVALE SCHOOL.