“My dear boy—no! I’ve been with it seven years, and we never did such a thing before; and we shall none of us know how to go about it. Let’s see; the drummers do it in the foot regiments. Seems a comical idea—beating a tattoo on a man’s back. Ought to do it with the drumsticks.”
“Don’t laugh at it, Wyatt,” cried Dick angrily.
“Certainly not, old fellow. But, really, we shan’t know what to do. Who’s to flog? The drummer can’t, because we haven’t got one. The trumpeter, I suppose.”
“It is horrible and disgraceful.”
“So it is, dear boy; but what are we to do? We don’t want to lose the man, and we can’t let him go on as he is going.”
“It will make him worse, Wyatt, and he’ll be nursing up a feeling of revenge.”
“Not a nice baby, that, for a man to nurse. But I hope for better things. Do him good.”
“No, no, no!”
“Don’t jump to conclusions, dear boy, till the remedy has been tried. But, really, I begin to feel a good deal like my father said he did—dear old fellow!—though I never believed it before.”
“What did he feel? Tell me.”