“Certainly, Ethel, I quite understand. I’ll just read you a letter I had this morning from Jim. You’d p’r’aps like to hear his opinion?”
“Oh, that boy’s demented! I had a note also from him this morning. He’s quite wild.”
“Good chap Jim,—knows a thing or two!” said Ted, nodding his head sagely.
CHAPTER V
The Cad of the Regiment
“This is the place where I was knifed, Paterson,” said Ted, “and there’s the old boy I had been bargaining with. Watch him eyeing me; he looks rather scared, don’t he?”
The wound was now quite healed, and impelled doubtless by a magnetic attraction, akin perhaps to that said to be exercised on murderers by the scenes of their crimes, our ensign had induced his chum Paterson to stroll with him through the bazar one evening after duty was over for the day.
While Ted had been down with his wound Alec Paterson had opened out in a remarkable manner and thrown down the last barriers of reserve. Ensign Paterson had only recently admitted Ted into close friendship. He was a Scottish lad, hailing from Lanarkshire, and no better choice of a friend could have been made. Physically he was tall and well-formed, intellectually he was ahead of most of his brother ensigns, and in moral character strong, upright, and healthy. He was very reserved, difficult to know, chary of his intimacy, and slow of speech. Tynan termed him a “saint”, and cordially disliked him; and in return Paterson disproved the accusation of saintliness by being obnoxiously polite and somewhat ponderously playful in his dealings with the regimental bête noir.
“He does look scared,” Alec replied. “He must think you were killed, and that your ghost has come to jump down his throat or ride on his back, or whatever it is that their evil spirits do. You had better speak and reassure him.”