"I'm going to be a soldier like you, and smoke pipes and cigarettes, and everything like you, Uncle Godfrey," he remarked. "When may I be a soldier?"
"Not yet," was the reply. "We take them young, but they have to be out of the nursery, my boy."
"When shall I be out of the nursery?" asked Chris, discontentedly.
"When you're in the army," his uncle said to tease him.
"But a man, a real soldier, said if I came to him, he would make me a soldier," announced the little beggar.
"What man?" asked Uncle Godfrey.
"A man what is staying in Marston, with his father and his mother and his brothers and his sisters," explained Chris. "A very tall, big man—as tall as you; and he finds soldiers for the Queen, he told me."
"Oh, a recruiting-sergeant!" Uncle Godfrey said. "How did you come to speak to him?"
"I saw him when I was standing outside the shop when Briggs was buying some buns for tea, and when I asked him if he knowed you," said Chris, all in a breath. "He had on such loverly clothes! Do you think if I go to him he will make me a soldier for the Queen?" he asked.
"Of course," his uncle replied. "But I'll tell you what, you had better learn to hold your gun properly, and not as you did the other day. If you don't, you'll end by shooting the sergeant, and being put in 'chokee'."