“Shut up, now, or he'll be puffing round here like a steam engine,” said a small dark man named Baker, “let smouldering fires lie on a day like this. Give me a light, Dandy.”
Jack Powell held out his cigar, and then, leaning back against the tree, blew a cloud of smoke about his head.
“I'll be blessed if I don't think seven hours' drill is too much of a bad thing,” he plaintively remarked; “and I may as well add, by the bye, that the next time I go to war, I intend to go in the character of a Major-general.”
“Make it Commander-in-chief. Don't be too modest, my boy.”
“Well, you may laugh if you like,” pursued Jack, “but between you and me, it was all the fault of those girls at home—they have an idea that patriotism never trims its sleeves, you know. On my word, I might have been Captain of the Leicesterburg Guards after Champe Lightfoot joined the cavalry; but such averted looks were turned from me by the ladies, that I had to jump into the ranks merely to reinstate myself in their regard. They made even Governor Ambler volunteer as a private, I believe, but he was lucky and got made a Colonel instead.”
Bland laughed softly.
“That reminds me of our Colonel,” he observed. “I overheard him talking to himself the other day, and he said: 'All I ask is not to be in command of a volunteer regiment in hell.'”
“Oh, he won't,” put in Dan; “all the volunteers will be in heaven—unless they're sent down below because they were too big fools to join the cavalry.”
“Then, in heaven's name, why didn't you join the cavalry?” inquired Baker.
Dan looked at him a moment, and then threw the apple core at a water bucket that stood upside down upon the grass. “Well, I couldn't go on my own horse, you see,” he replied, “and I wouldn't go on the Government's. I don't ride hacks.”