It was a new experience, but Phil, who stood nearest the door, carried out the order smartly, and, snatching his hat from his head, followed the sergeant-major. A moment later they were standing in front of a table covered with green baize, and with a number of books and blue papers all neatly arranged upon it. Behind it sat an officer, dressed in a dark-blue uniform, with braided front, and a peaked cap encircled with a dark band and bearing a miniature grenade in front. It was the adjutant, and he at once cross-questioned the new recruits.
“Both of you have been in a menagerie,” he remarked with some astonishment, “but surely you—and he pointed towards, Phil—have had some education?”
“Yes, sir, I have been to a good school,” Phil answered, “and before I joined the menagerie I was a clerk in an office for a short time.”
“Ah, just the kind of man we want!” exclaimed the officer. “And both of you wish to enlist in the Grenadier Guards? Very well; send them across to the doctor’s.”
“Right turn! Quick march!” The words almost made Tony jump out of his skin, but he and Phil obeyed them promptly, and next moment were breathing a trifle more freely in the open air. A corporal was now sent for, and he conducted them across to another room. Here they were told to strip, and a few minutes later were ushered into an inner room, in which were the regimental doctor and a sergeant who sat with a book before him. Phil and Tony were sounded and thumped all over, and then told to hop up and down the floor. They swung their arms round their heads till they were red in the face, and swung their legs to and fro to show that they had free movement of their joints. Then their eyes were tested, and these and their hearing having proved satisfactory, they were declared fit for the army, and were told to dress themselves.
“What’s coming next, Phil?” whispered Tony, with a chuckle. “We’ve been interviewed—or whatever they calls it—by the officer, and now we’ve been punched all over, like folks used to do with that prize mare the boss in the old show was so fond of.”
“Wait and see,” Phil answered, for he too was wondering what their next experience would be.
They had not long to wait. The same corporal who had conducted them before took them round to the back of the building, up a steep flight of stairs, and showed them into the quarter-master’s stores. And here they spent almost an hour, during which time a complete set of uniform, with the exception of a bearskin, was served out to each of them. Their civilian clothing was then taken from them and safely packed away, and feeling remarkably queer, and uncertain how to carry the smart little cane which had been given them, they were marched away to the barrack-room, heads in air and chests well to the front, as every new recruit does when in uniform for the first time, and trying to look as though they were well used to their new circumstances, whereas every man they passed grinned, and, nudging his comrade, chuckled: “New uns! Look at the chest that redheaded cove’s got on ’im, and don’t the other hold his nose up?” or something equally flattering.
But Phil and Tony were blissfully ignorant of these facetious remarks, and in a few minutes had reached the room in which they were to sleep, and had taken possession of their cots.
The following day they were once more inspected by the adjutant, and under his eye the regimental tailor chalk-marked their clothing where alterations were to be made.