‘What made you join?’
Jack looked at his companion and laughed. ‘I might as well ask you that, might I not?’ he said.
‘You may, and the answer’s simple. My dad shoved me in. I had nothing to say in the matter.’
‘Do you like being a trumpeter?’
Will Hodson shrugged his shoulders. ‘I’d rather be a swell on five thousand pounds a year,’ he said; ‘but every one must do something. We’re soldiers. The governor put in twenty-five years, grandfather was killed at Waterloo, and I dare say some of my forebears were banging a drum or handling a pike at’—— and he paused for a word.
‘Blenheim or Ramillies?’ suggested Jack.
‘Ah, that’s it,’ said Will Hodson quite calmly; ‘the name slipped my memory for a moment. But, I say, you’re a cut above the usual ruck, you know; you won’t find it all honey here, I can tell you.’
‘Oh, I can rough it well enough,’ said Jack stoutly.
‘I hope you can. Well, here we are,’ and Hodson opened a door which stood at the head of a flight of stone steps they had just ascended.
‘Chums,’ he cried, ‘an illustrious arrival has come amongst us. Allow me to introduce to you John Blair, askewer, taterpeeler to his Highness the King of the Cannibal Islands.’