“Hurray! Yes,” he cried. “Wonder whether they’re scarlet?”
“No,” I said. “They’re sure to be blue, like the sailors’.”
“Oh! I don’t know about that,” he cried. “Marines wear scarlet. I daresay they’re red.”
“Should you open the box if you were me?”
“Well, no,” said Bigley; “perhaps not. He didn’t tell us to. But oh, how I should like to take the paper off one of these pistols!”
“So should I,” was my reply, with a longing look at the array of quaint-looking parcels; “but we mustn’t do that, though I do feel as if I could do it up again just as neatly.”
“No; don’t try,” cried Bigley. “Let ’em be. We can think what’s inside. I shouldn’t wonder if some of them are mounted with brass, and have lions’ heads on the butts.”
“Yes, and the swords too—brass lions’ heads, holding the guards in their mouths.”
“Why, we haven’t seen any belts.”
“No; they would be with the uniforms. I say, I wonder whether the cutlasses are very sharp?”