"P. G. Hamilton, 'Captain.'"
When two white men, the only specimen of their race and class within a radius of hundreds of miles, are living together in an isolated post, they either hate or tolerate one another. The exception must always be found in two men of a similar service having similar objects to gain, and infused with a common spirit of endeavour.
Fortunately neither Lieutenant Tibbetts nor his superior were long enough associated to get upon one another's nerves.
Lieutenant Tibbetts received this letter while he was shaving, and came across the parade ground outrageously attired in his pyjamas and his helmet. Clambering up the wooden stairs, his slippers flap-flapping across the broad verandah, he burst into the chief's bedroom, interrupting a stern and frigid Captain Hamilton in the midst of his early morning coffee and roll.
"Look here, old sport," said Bones, indignantly waving a frothy shaving brush at the other, "what the dooce is all this about?"
He displayed a crumpled letter.
"Lieutenant Tibbetts," said Hamilton of the Houssas severely, "have you no sense of decency?"
"Sense of decency, my dear old thing!" repeated Bones. "I am simply full of it. That is why I have come."
A terrible sight was Bones at that early hour with the open pyjama jacket showing his scraggy neck, with his fish mouth drooping dismally, his round, staring eyes and his hair rumpled up, one frantic tuft at the back standing up in isolation.